The Parting Glass
by spicyshimmy
Summary: Post ME3 fic. Highly speculative. SPOILERS! In the aftermath of Shepard's choice, Steve Cortez and James Vega figure out what it means to be alive in London, Kaidan Alenko figures out what it means to be alive at all, and Garrus Vakarian figures it all o.
1. PROLOGUE

The night before Commander Shepard defeated the Reapers, Garrus brought two bottles to Commander's quarters on the Normandy. After all, just one bottle wouldn't be right for both of them. The real pity was not being able to drink the same stuff, even if those standards _were _splitting hairs the way a sniper split targets.

Humans thought big. Turians _were _big. And it was about time for Shepard to take him up on an old offer.

They never shared that drink.

The door was shut but even the airlock seal couldn't keep out the noise coming from inside; Garrus turned before he got too close—even if neither of the men inside would hear him, all things considered.

James Vega would have said _I'll have what he's having_, in a colloquial and potentially humorous fashion—a new twist on an old line, as infelicitous as it was apropos of…something. But James Vega was drinking alone, and Garrus didn't plan on doing the same. Not that night. Maybe not any other.

He left the brandy with Dr. Chakwas.

It was allegedly her favorite.

#

Everybody says: _it's a cliché for a reason_. Whether that reason's truth or people just lack imagination, it doesn't matter.

James Vega thought he'd have more time with Commander Shepard. And after that, brand new tattoo on his shoulders making him hold them different, he'd be able to tell the truth from the cliché. Not just pick the pieces apart, either—he'd _blow them _apart.

Just like Shepard.

Crazy guy.

But the morning after they defeated the Reapers—with a little help, a lot of running around the galaxy, diplomacy at its finest, and none of it possible without Shepard knowing how to play the game—the man in question wasn't there to see the whole thing go down.

He was already gone.

Not 'in a better place.' _Gone_. That was no cliché, and James wasn't going to be the one to dress it up in formal-wear to meet whatever council it had to—for permission, for clearance, for show.

While the sky lit up way too bright—brighter than the sun ever managed, all comm devices going down, static giving way to _natural sound_, not _even_static anymore but real fucking blackness, the ground itself shaking from distant blasts. Before everything went still. Right there, right then, at the end of everything, the cliché happened.

And it felt pretty real.

Diana Allers was all right. They'd made passes at each other before, a dance James knew well, even if there was more duck-and-weave involved, way more feinted punches than ones that actually landed, than he liked.

'One of these days, James,' Shepard told him once. 'you might have to learn _the dance _is as much about when you _don't _as when you _do_.'

'You see me dancing right now, Loco?' James had asked.

That wasn't it.

'So,' Diana said. Her voice was small but it was too loud, nothing else to shield it from the present—much less the future—and James's big heartbeat was thudding in his chest, his breathing coming in too hard. Same as always. 'That was…_Damn _it. I can't believe I wasn't covering the story. I was having end-of-the-world sex with a soldier instead.'

'Maybe that _is _the story, ace,' James replied.

She'd been sweating before. James wasn't going to flatter himself about that. He did up his uniform again and she combed her fingers through her hair, then touched the back of his neck, somewhere too high above the collar to know where the tattoo was. It was just skin there. Only skin.

#

Steve didn't have anybody to send one last radio transmission to.

After that, all transmissions ended.

He didn't know what he was hearing, what he wasn't hearing. Sweat was in his eyes and he wasn't actually flying, so he couldn't blink past it. He couldn't see a damn thing.

It wasn't like a crash-landing. Not that he would've told anybody this, but he was getting too old for those. Being blindsided was one thing but heading to that point everyone knew was coming—then flying past it—_that _was different.

He pushed himself off the dash, arms beat up, elbow bleeding, but other than that he was OK, depending on the definition. The ship wasn't. None of the familiar lights was on, not even flashing.

Disappointment. Relief. Nothing passed before his eyes, no memories of Robert that took shape in front of him, just a blank darkness that cleared when he wiped his hand over his eyes. He was thinking about him, sure, but he always did. Not because it kept him alive. Maybe because it kept _Steve _alive.

'Vega!' he heard himself shouting. 'Hey, Vega—you out there?'

Something was burning. Rubber, tar, metal, all that stuff. Wires were down and hissing brightly, spitting, snapping coils; that was enough to light his way through the hall, past Allers' overturned cameras, banging his toe on the lens. It shattered.

He could see them in a busted up airlock, through the white sparks.

Being young again would've been nice, Steve thought, already moving on to check the armory, to check for survivors, for assets.

But at least he still had the chance to be old some more.

#

There was a moment—Kaidan definitely saw it in his eyes—when Shepard didn't want to bring him along for the final ride.

Actually, there were a lot of moments like that. Just replace 'final' with 'dangerous' and there you had it. But they were soldiers, brothers in arms first, _in_each other's arms second. They didn't have to insult each other that way.

Kaidan was relieved.

Kaidan was terrified.

That was what it meant to be themselves, so there they were. First kisses, last kisses, it was all in the past. They'd known the terms since the beginning: _while it lasted_.

They'd just…do the same as they always did, because the worst part was always having to pretend it couldn't be something random, stray shrapnel before the end, that Shepard's story—his legend—could stop short in the middle and they'd have to go on without him. And they _would_go on without him.

_I'm not ready for that_, Kaidan thought. _Hell, I'm not ready for this. _But when he asked himself, _Is Shepard? _all that came back was the beginnings of an old headache, and each fired round was only making it worse.

He'd given up on thinking about survival. Now, he just wanted to be the first to die.

He thought maybe he'd understand Shepard then, the places he'd been, the places he couldn't remember, while Kaidan was somewhere else, feeling him like a soldier's phantom limb, survivor's guilt and survivor's luck.

Kaidan was ready. Relieved and terrified had nothing to do with it. That night, they were dying in London, a suicide mission in more than name only.

He thought, _there's a lot of blood_.

#

No more damn consequences, Shepard thought. Destroy the synthetics; destroy himself. No one could say he didn't understand the terms—intimate, personal, and now, forever.

He'd already died once. He was done with hoping, but maybe he'd be able to enjoy the best part about it the second time around.


	2. CHAPTER 1: VEGA

'The worst part,' James told the Asari volunteer, 'is that there's no _cerveza_.'

The Asari laughed. She didn't actually think it was the worst part—and she got the same post-war look in her eyes everybody was wearing these days, along with the black armbands. James knew what she was thinking—more like _who_ she was thinking about. Somebody important, not ready yet to say their name out loud. Or maybe her mind was headed toward a home planet. Or maybe she was telling herself how great it was and how terrible it was that they just didn't know—all those people out there, all those systems, all those possibilities.

They could live in dumb hope forever if they wanted to, but _dumb hope_ went with drinking like lime went with tequila. It always needed a _little_ something to balance it out.

Piccadilly Circus Memorial Field Hospital was full, as always. James shifted the weight of his rations bag from one side to the other—it wasn't that heavy, and wasn't that the problem?—and didn't bother to shield his eyes, looking down over the rows of tents and the rows of cots.

He'd helped put some of those up.

He'd also helped tear some of the city down.

Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Post-war, people could block out the stuff that didn't help with rebuilding, at least for a while. Like the Asari volunteer—nurse or whatever she was, since whatever she used to be didn't count anymore—someone whose name James didn't know and didn't care to. She'd seen the dog tags he was still sporting, so she knew him about as well as anybody else did: soldier, big one, probably still clinging to the past, not ready to shake it off. Not ready to stop hanging around the field hospitals looking for survivors.

'Guess I've overstayed my welcome,' James added, not bothering to clear his throat. 'You'll tell me if somebody by that name _does_ show up, all right?'

'Or let you know if I come across some _cerveza_,' the Asari replied.

That was a good one, James thought. He even chuckled, canned food tucked under one arm, making his way past Leicester Square—what was left of it—and toward the National Gallery Shelter, blown out shell of a building that at least gave some people a roof over their heads. Or half a roof.

It was still better than nothing.

And it was way better than _no roof_, especially when it rained, although at least the stuff coming down wasn't black anymore.

London. James had heard stories, enough to guess the weather wouldn't be his thing. Now he _knew _it wasn't. The food wasn't so hot, either, even if it did stand up to what they had back on the Normandy.

There it was—the old grit in his throat, something he could blame on how bad the air was directly over the city. Blow up enough mass relays and the atmosphere was bound to get dense; blow up enough everything else and you'd be coughing it up for days, weeks, even months. 'Now you've finally got an excuse for being short of breath—is that what you're trying to tell me, Vega?' Cortez asked, in those early days, when they still hadn't figured out if the stuff was going to kill them or not.

This time, James _did _clear his throat. It worked. Whatever was lodged in the back there shook free, right as he stepped clear of a couple of Turians trying to figure out how three fingers were supposed to get a decent grip on their _hammers_.

Garrus had been the same way. The guy knew it wasn't going to happen. Some people'd up and died because the life that came after just wasn't what they were meant to be living—only that kind of practicality wasn't the same as the stuff they had now, putting their heads down and eating whatever they could, sleeping whenever they could, breathing however they could.

Considering the quality of air was tighter than it was up in space before they had time to depressurize—or decontaminate—that was saying a lot.

James put the goods down on the table, a real fancy thing from a point in history so long before synthetics that it was almost funny to see it still in mostly one piece. There it stood, with a collection of salvaged tech, mostly garbage, and his rations spread out over the top, one scorch mark on a wobbly leg, but the rest of it intact. There was the old aquarium VI that didn't work anymore next to a busted up replica of the Normandy—the only two things that hadn't broken in the final crash.

As for the fish in the tank—obviously, they'd died.

And if they hadn't, somebody would've eaten them before too long.

James popped one of the tabs on his dinner, peeling the lid back. Sometimes he sniffed it first just to prove it didn't bother him and sometimes he didn't.

This was a 'didn't' kind of night.

'Damn,' he said.

'That good, huh?' Cortez asked. There _he_ stood, not in the doorway like old times because there weren't any doorways; stations got marked off with separators, but it didn't do much for keeping out the snoring at night, temporary accommodations until things got stable again.

Then again, that covered everything.

'Even better,' James replied. 'Finger-licking good, Esteban. You here for another free meal?'

'What else?' Cortez stepped inside, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, wearing a look that was close to whatever the Asari volunteer had on earlier. Maybe it was just one of those days. Feeling too much led to thinking too much—and when you couldn't even buy a guy a drink to take his mind off things, they got these crazy ideas like rashes, like allergies, making it that much harder to breathe. They went into relief efforts as a _grief counselor_, of all the things, listening to everybody's sob stories they couldn't keep inside.

James rolled his shoulders out. The vertebrae at the back of his neck popped above the tattoo. 'A'right. Pick your poison.'

'Already have,' Cortez said.

He'd offered once—to hear James out, whatever he had to get off his chest. _It's a lot for anybody to deal with, _he'd said, turning serious, leaning forward with his hands together, thumb rubbing his knuckles and the thin skin spread between, like little valleys on unknown soil. His sleeves were rolled up then, too, and James could've asked…well, _anything_. Not the big questions, the ones nobody could answer, but the stuff like _What's a pilot do when he can't fly, anyway?_ or _What's a soldier do when the war's over, for that matter? _That stuff sounded good in theory, looked better on paper, but it was harder to swallow than the ash and more dangerous than a live wire sparking loose in a ship's armory.

So he'd shrugged, leaning back. 'If wishes were fishes, Esteban…' he'd said.

'Yeah, yeah.' Cortez hadn't pulled away after, not for a while. 'You'd be shooting 'em right in the barrel; _I know_.'

James's dog-tags jingled. They were made to withstand all kinds of conditions, all temperatures—all kinds of heat—and that was how the relief effort had managed to identify so many of the survivors in the days after the synthetics were destroyed. It was how they managed to identify so many of the casualties, too, to put names on all the deaths.

Civilians were a different issue. Most of them had evacuated, or tried. Plenty hadn't. Now they were sharing the same shelters, most of the same jobs, night duties and the shell-shocked sitting on cots, a heavy cloud still hanging over the dark sky. That sort of thing.

James ate, dog-tags settled again. No matter how much time he had to 'adjust,' there was no way he'd get used to the shuffle of natural unrest. No VIs humming, no constant buzz from strip lighting, nothing—and into the void it left came the coughing, shifting, fabric on fabric, snoring, muted conversation, throats cleared, crying sometimes, quiet and muffled by an arm or a pillow or not even, the stuff that _came out_ because it had to go _somewhere_. It couldn't stay inside. _That _was the real poison.

James wiped the sweat off the back of his neck, staring at the far wall and the hole in it, sheeted over by tarp, a piece too small to be useful anywhere else. He could hear Cortez tucking in, the pop of the tab accompanied by the same short sigh after the first bite.

That was one cool thing about Esteban. He listened to a lot of people and he was _probably_ good at it, considering how they all looked at him after, but when it came to pretending everything smelled and tasted the way it used to, he never went in for it.

They both knew it wasn't prettier than it looked.

'That good, huh?' James asked.

'Even better,' Cortez replied.

'Yeah, well. You take another guy's food all the time, you don't get to complain about what's cooking.' James bit off a piece of jerky—looked and felt like rubber, tasted even worse—and spent the next minute just chewing. They were all just chewing, but jawing it up meant listening less to the sounds around him and less to his own thoughts and more to the creak of his joints. It was all locked up inside. And that was better than the alternative.

'Way I remember it, Mr. Vega, you used to be better at idle conversation.' Cortez wiped something from the corner of his mouth with his thumb, tendons in his forearm shifting. James wasn't looking. 'In fact, _way I remember it_, a guy couldn't hang out in Purgatory without hearing you losing at cards all the way out in Bay E28.'

'I didn't _lose_,' James said. 'I was just…keeping up morale. Some people do that different, Esteban.'

'Some people do it by taking their clothes off round after round?' Cortez asked. 'Hey, don't look at me. That'd keep up _my_ morale. Should've dealt myself in. Wish I had.'

'I didn't lose,' James said again.

'You're right.' Cortez was leaning forward again, the way James had when he got his N7 ink. Now it was just a relic—like the aquarium VI on his _ro__ad-cocoa_ table, or whatever it was Cortez'd called it. 'We didn't lose.'

James stared at that hole in the wall.

Actually, for a while after everything, when he'd been busted up helping pull some guys out of the wreckage—once all the ships in earth's orbit came crashing down, Normandy included—that old tattoo'd snagged him an infection, coming in hot like a fever. He sweated it out after a day, less, and the ink was still there like it'd never given him hell in the first place. But it wasn't easy to see in the mirror, especially when there weren't too many of those hanging around, most of them broken during all the fighting. Nothing but shards to go by now.

He knew it didn't mean the thing wasn't on him anymore. Just because he couldn't see it on the regular didn't mean it wasn't there.

Cortez, for example. _He _did his thing all day long and still turned up again at the end of it, just like bad credit. Out of sight and out of mind, but not always out of time _or_ out of luck.

Sometimes out of sight wasn't _even_ out of mind.

James needed a drink.

Contraband was going to end up a pretty big thing sooner or later—and always too soon. James had already knocked some local heads together over rumors of a black market starting up in the underground, London's old tunnels, what _hadn't_ caved in.

No matter what they'd been through, people had to be smart. Too damn smart for their own good. Smart enough that _other _people were going to die because of it—how all the best plans worked, _apparently_.

'You know, I've seen a lot of guys tear themselves apart over not talking about stuff,' Cortez said. 'I was one of 'em.'

''Stuff,'' James repeated.

'Yeah, 'stuff,'' Cortez replied. 'You wanna make something out of it? You _itching_ for that fight again?'

James looked up and they looked at each other, and there wasn't anything angry in Cortez's mouth like James expected, no challenge in his eyes. It was an honest question, which James'd always figured was one of those oxymorons—something that couldn't survive in the real world, much less whole damn galaxies of real worlds.

But for now, maybe forever, all they had was this one. It was like finding out a tee'd shrunk in the wash and now it was way too small, wrinkling and pulling at the seams, neck ripping when you tugged it on.

'Hey,' Cortez said. 'That wasn't a _let's take this outside_ suggestion or anything. Just so you know.'

'I know,' James said. 'Shit, Esteban, I fucking _know_.'

It felt good to curse like that, stuff that would've flagged him with a demerit back when _pendejada_ like _demerits_ counted. If they ever counted.

James didn't say anything else. Cortez didn't either. And he left to tuck in for the night pretty soon after, not pressing his advantage, not pressing his luck, which was why he was the pilot and James was the soldier. Different skill-sets. Different instincts. Different personalities and different training. It was the natural stuff, the unnatural stuff, how James still hadn't learned that thing Shepard had, that thing Shepard was trying to teach him: how not to burn up from both ends all night long.

But James didn't know where there was room for raw muscle in finesse.

A weapon was only as good as whatever it was shooting at—as much as the hand doing all the shooting. Besides, he never _could_ take advice from somebody who didn't live by the same rules he was laying down.

James kicked up his legs, knees bent, lying back on his cot. If he didn't tuck his knees in, his feet'd dangle over the edge. He'd put this bed together, along with a whole lot more. Unlike a Turian, he knew how to use a hammer to build stuff _and_ tear it down again. 'Now, this has _two_ ends,' he remembered explaining. 'One that looks like the front of your face and one that looks like the back of your head. Smash with the front, pull with the back. Shit, maybe you guys'd be better off just using your heads for the job. You don't scar easy, right? Tough Turian skin? You gonna unleash some kinda toxin to make me shut up now?'

The banter'd been nothing but one-sided. A few of them had scars, but not anything big enough, bad enough, to warrant the nickname.


	3. CHAPTER 2: CORTEZ

It wasn't a clear day. Steve didn't wake up expecting one.

There was a taste in his mouth that was gone once he ate something, once he got his routine started—once he headed over to Piccadilly Circus Memorial Field Hospital to see what he could help out with. There were a couple of guys he thought of as _his guys_, still getting through the tough stuff—like somehow what they'd fought for, how hard they'd fought, wasn't _the tough stuff_ already—and sometimes they said it was good to see him again.

Sometimes they didn't.

'Good to see you again,' he said, because they couldn't take it for granted.

He knew he wasn't their squadmate, their superior, _their guy,_ so why he thought of them as _his_ had as much to do with what he needed as it had to do with what _they_ needed.

So long as he recognized it—and he did—then he could think of it as mutual.

That wasn't something they had too many chances for, not even before everything.

It wasn't that anyone knew how to answer that question about humanity, either. And it was important they kept to the small stuff instead of the bigger issues—names, memories, little things and all of them personal. Favorite foods. What they'd eat if they could. Where they were from. Remembering how to want stuff again, step by step, without having to ask themselves, is the risk worth taking?

If they could answer those questions, thumbing over their dog-tags, skin on metal, looking down at their hands or looking out past Steve's shoulder but getting it—understanding where they were in the present—then it was a good day, even if it wasn't a clear one.

Steve helped out with the bandages sometimes, too. With holding somebody down, hooking his arms under their armpits and feeling them sweat against his wrists. Those were also what he thought of as the good days.

And Vega was good at it. Even better at keeping the kids distracted when it was time for a checkup, but he kept acting like he wasn't around, like he hadn't spent all day in Piccadilly, like he _wasn't_ there with a bunch of fugees even now, letting them climb all over him and mess up his hair.

'Way I hear it, Mr. Vega, you're on your way to becoming London's very own friendly dinosaur,' Steve said, setting up next to a few crates for lunch. One of the orphans was pulling on Vega's ears. 'Kind of like a mascot, when you think about it. Pretty impressive, too.'

'What can I say?' Vega didn't shake her off. 'Go big or get out of town.'

'I'm not sure that's how the saying goes,' Steve said.

'Whatever,' Vega said, twisting underneath the kid's expert hold. 'I'm just benchpressing these little dudes. You _know_ they're heavier than they look.'

_So's a lot of stuff_, Steve thought, but he didn't say it.

'That's right,' Vega added. 'You guys are helping _me_ out here, not the other way 'round. Now hold still or I'm gonna drop you, and it's a _long_ way down from all the way up here.'

At least he wasn't teaching them Spanish—the Vega dictionary version, from _cerveza_ to _pendejo_ and all the curses in between.

'Just leave it, all right?' Vega had said once, too late at night, way past curfew, standing out back of the gallery while he did chin-ups on a bent lamppost. Whether or not he'd bent it himself, Steve had no idea. 'These kids don't even have— They're gonna learn it _sometime_. Better they figure it out fast, _now_, _and_ know how to use it.'

After that, he cleaned up his act.

Mostly.

Steve's lunch tasted like reconstituted waste, but the kids were eating theirs, putting it _away_ whenever Vega tore into something. Steve noticed that. They just wanted to be like him. Then Vega noticed him noticing it and the moment was ruined, just like anything else when you drew too much attention to it. Vega shrugged one big shoulder, sweat underneath the pits of his tee. It'd been white once, but like everything else, it'd changed from what it used to be. Not to something _worse_, but to something different.

'We're eating _proteins_,' one of the kids said. 'Stole it to keep our strength up in the wild.'

'Nice one, Vega,' Steve said. 'You're teaching them some _real_ life lessons here.'

Vega grinned, showing teeth. Like a dinosaur—but if it was for Steve's sake or for the kids or both, or because Vega was just doing it because he was Vega, it was too close of a call. Steve didn't have enough experience reading people like engines yet. All he knew was Vega would be Vega whether somebody loved it or not.

At least somebody was having fun. Somebody big—and a lot of little somebodies with him. The kids were using him like his body was a new kind of battlefield, probably not thinking the word itself, but when they stepped on him he just flexed and held it, down on his back between two tarped-up grates, teaching them how to walk over a person without them even feeling it.

'Course, you wouldn't want to try this on somebody like Esteban over there,' Vega added. 'You gotta figure out first who's tough and who isn't.' Steve couldn't see his face, but he knew he was tapping himself on the temple when he continued, 'It ain't all about muscle all the time. Sometimes it's about using your head, too. You got that, _ninita_? I'm telling you, don't step on anybody scrawny like Esteban. He can't take it.'

'Aw, Mr. Vega, you _do_ care,' Steve said, leaning back. He watched as Vega straightened into a sit-up with a grunt, as the kids scattered laughing, running to their crates to hide. Vega's wrinkled tee rolled up and he pulled it down, fabric straining at the shoulders.

If he was doing his own laundry, that'd explain a lot of the shrinking. Hard to imagine anybody getting bigger instead of smaller these days.

_Just dump the stuff in with the rest of mine_, Steve remembered offering a few weeks back. _It's cool. A couple more dirty t-shirts won't make much of a difference, and since that's _all_ you wear…_

_Uh-huh_, Vega'd replied, which meant _no w_ay in marine language, apparently.

Go figure.

He'd been distracted at the time, not even wearing one of his t-shirts, sweating it out getting a wall repaired with a bunch of Turians who, he'd said, weren't _even_ doing the best with what they'd been given. 'Three goddamn fingers, man,' he'd said, wiping his forehead with his t-shirt, then heading back inside the shelter. 'Three. Goddamn. Fingers.'

Sure, Steve agreed. They were good at some things, okay at others, terrible at the rest. Same as everyone else around here. And not _everyone_ had the same advantages.

'Ready or not, you'd _better_ be ready,' Vega said, finishing off his protein. Rations might've been getting slimmer, but Vega wasn't. He was just about the only soldier post-war Steve knew who'd actually bulked up.

'You gonna roar like a dinosaur?' Steve asked.

'Hey,' Vega replied. 'Dinosaurs don't _roar_, OK? So _no_, I am _not_ gonna do that.'

It'd been a long time. Steve laughed and Vega did too, even the taste of lunch not enough to sour it. But the Asari volunteer with the black armband clearing her throat next to Steve put the lid on that, whatever it was, something over so fast Steve didn't have time to gauge its structure, much less its meaning.

He knew her not by name but by sight, passing her sometimes when his volunteer shift at Piccadilly was over and he headed back to check in at the National Gallery, some of the PTSD going on in there just as bad as whatever Steve saw in the field hospitals. The Asari had afternoon duty, early evening maybe, and Steve didn't have to know people—people _or_ aliens—as well as he knew models and makes to realize she knew Vega too.

Then again, a lot of people knew Vega.

Not always for bad reasons. Sometimes just for awkward ones.

'Hey,' Vega said. He sounded surprised. 'Something I can do you for?'

'It might not be anything,' the Asari said, 'you know that already—but you told me to alert you if anyone came through with any of those names you mentioned.'

'Names, huh?' Steve asked, but there was something in his stomach and it wasn't the proteins from lunch, tacky leather that left grit in his throat on the way down, that'd form a hard lump anyway. This just helped it tighten up quicker.

'Which name is it?' When Vega stepped forward, Steve was sitting at the right height to hear something pop in his knee—and to get caught in his shadow, big as it was, cutting off the hazy sunlight. He _wasn't_ at the right height to see Vega's face, just his elbow, the vein on the inside and one of the muscles—some flexor or other—twitching once, visibly. 'Which one?'

The Asari pulled out a clipboard, checking it over—twice—which made sense, given the guy bearing down on her, unfortunately making the moment that much more intense.

But she knew her stuff. She'd seen more than they'd ever know. She held her ground, her eyes scanning the info, confirming something for herself that she probably didn't need to. Then she nodded, because she'd never _actually_ doubted what she'd find there.

'He finally woke up this morning, and we got a name from him. He was wearing one of those…commemorative dog-tags they issued; we've seen a lot of them, enough to know not to hope. Of course, it said Shepard on the back, so we couldn't ID him until—'

'Hey,' Vega said. 'Which. Name. Is it?'

'Alenko,' the Asari replied. 'Major Kaidan Alenko.'


	4. CHAPTER 3: VEGA

He wasn't Shepard.

But if the Normandy crew took a shot for every time they thought something like that, then even James'd be drunk by breakfast.

Hell, the guy had to deal with that one on the regular, what with…everything. James could still remember the time when his N7 tattoo was _finally_ finished and he headed back from the Holding Docks to the ship. 'Yo, Esteban,' he'd said, not even swaying on his feet. 'Where's Commander Loco at? I wanna show him my new _ink_.'

'You're a little too late for that,' Cortez replied, checking some orders or whatever on a bleeping screen. James couldn't even see the time, squinting into the light. 'Commander Shepard has…left the Normandy. He's on a date. Might've been able to catch him if you'd acted sooner, though.'

'Nah, I'll just show him in the morning,' James said, then, 'wait. _Seriously? _On a _date?_ With— Don't _tell_ me he's stealing Joker's virtual reality girl. 'Cause that shit just ain't right.'

'Like I said…' Cortez shut off the touchpad screen and some of the whirring that filled the bay powered down with it. Everything was way too close to too dark and too quiet for James's taste, because nobody'd be able to see the tattoo in all its glory this way. Nobody was even looking. Meanwhile, the skin was still stinging under his civvies. 'You're a _little_ too late, Mr. Vega. Hell—seems like we both are.'

'You in one of those weird moods? I get it,' James said. 'I get it.' He lifted his hand over his shoulder, then dropped off to bed, sleeping on his stomach that night instead of on his back.

Maybe he did get it and maybe he didn't. That was a long time ago, but when it turned out the date in question was _Major Alenko_, rumor around the Normandy—Daniels and Donnelly ran their mouths like crazy—was that they didn't get back until _late _had already turned into _early_.

One of those things James never said, as many times as he thought it, was _Hey, Loco. Didn't know you were _that_ crazy. _

James shook out his arms, elbows jittery to his fingertips, on his way past the rows of cots, past the first few tents where the real bad cases were kept, then into the ICU—if you could call it that—where the doctors and their nurses worked round the clock until they needed some TLC, themselves.

For whatever reason, James hadn't been down that way much. He knew some guys… But everybody _knew some guys_. They'd get out, get on their feet again, show up to help the Turians screw in a light bulb, and the only thing James'd have say to that was, _It's about damn time. These guys need all the help they can get_.

Some of the cots had names.

Some didn't.

The thing was, they'd started labeling all the John Does and Jane Does _John Shepard_ and _Jane Shepard_. The names that weren't names stared up at James as he passed by, doing his best not to bump into any of them or the cots they belonged to.

Cortez was still there at his back and nobody said hey to them, friendly or not, and nobody was shouting, and everything was quiet as wearing a helmet in an airlock—until the chinpiece cut into the throat and started to choke you. James knew he was breathing heavy; he was always breathing heavy. But when that was the only sound you could hear, not even a hum in the distance to keep you company, you got desperate for something, _anything_, a groan or a cough or a whimper or a _screw you_.

'It was just a hunch, Esteban,' James said, cracking his neck as they followed that Asari for what felt like miles of casualties. 'Not _even_ a hunch. Just figured maybe, I dunno, somebody might turn up _sometime_.'

'_Somebody_,' Cortez repeated.

'Yeah, _somebody_,' James said. He remembered the night before, Cortez small and so damn spunky, words like sparring but still too much duck and weave. 'Why—you wanna make something out of it?'

'Kaidan Alenko.' The Asari came to a stop in front of one of the beds and James asked himself, did he help set that one up? What did it matter? Was it even something he owed Shepard or were all bets off because the stakes had changed—or were all bets still on forever because one of the players was MIA without settling the score?

Dead. Dead _and_ gone_. _The only thing that could make one word lonelier was another word showing up to make it sound even worse. James let out one of his heavy breaths only to find Cortez was already moving, already at the bed, not fast at all—but nice and easy, steady and smooth, the way he flew. Or the way he used to.

'Major, you have visitors,' the Asari said.

Obviously.

James hung back so he didn't bump the cot. The name on the plaque had been crossed out, from _John Shepard_ to _Kaidan Alenko_, something recent.

There was that damn grit again. It had to be the stuff they were eating. It just didn't go down, staying in the throat all day. And meanwhile, nobody could swallow.

'Don't…' Alenko's voice said, definitely his but definitely shaky, like protesting was part of an old routine.

Wake up; get called major; wince.

His face'd been patched with some bandages but it was still recognizable as _his face _underneath 'em. Nothing too bad, then, with some pretty serious bruising around the eyes, body propped up and sitting stiff against the backboard. One of his arms didn't look too good, all slung up, and he was covered with this clean white blanket, and there was always the chance they needed to be grateful for what they couldn't see. How bad it was.

So _how bad was it?_

'…The 'major' thing,' Alenko continued. 'It's not…' He had the grit too; James could hear it. And he had to go and focus on James first—not Cortez standing next to him—so James did something stupid.

Something _real_ stupid.

He straightened his shoulders, standing to attention with an honest-to-god salute.

It was the only thing he could do, the only thing he knew how to. Maybe some of them had the wrong dog-tags but they still had _something_, the metal tinkling in the silence, the cot shifting, somebody clearing their throat, James waiting—because of the look on Alenko's face—for a _screw you_.

But Alenko looked away, down at his hand in his lap, his other one strapped to his side and swollen beneath a whole mess of medical tape.

'So,' Alenko said, his voice on the edge of the grit. It had to be him, 'cause nobody else talked like that. 'You two…made it.'

'So did you,' Cortez said.

'That's 'cause he's tougher than he looks.' James's elbow hurt when he unbent it. He had to lighten up those reps—or do more until the pain knew who it was dealing with and quit coming around. 'Isn't that right? One serious little motherfucker. Glad to see you're still kicking. _Damn_—Major Kaidan Alenko.'

'The 'major' thing,' Alenko repeated. 'If you could… Don't.'

'You know Vega.' Cortez found something close to a chair and pulled it to the side of the cot. He sat down easy, like unfolding his legs didn't hurt, while James stared at the back of his neck waiting to see the hair stand on end or the skin roll with a shiver. Or something. Or _anything_. But Cortez had experience with this shit, always talking to _his guys_ or however he thought of them. Probably _his guys_. James knew the look. 'Would you believe he _still_ isn't so good with taking directions?'

'I take _orders_,' James said. 'It's different. _Way_ different. Not even in the same galaxy.'

Alenko coughed. It took James a minute to realize it was actually a chuckle, this dry thing scrubbed clean by all the grit. 'Yeah. I remember that.'

'He's hard to forget,' Cortez said. 'Sometimes I think he does it on purpose.'

'So long as he's not beating everybody at cards.' Alenko's bad hand twitched, movement James'd needed in Cortez but got in another place. Of course. Everything always came that way; the stuff you wanted was always the stuff that hurt. They called that irony, saying _isn't that ironic_? And James called it bullshit. 'I remember that too. So…' Alenko swallowed. 'How long's it been?'

James didn't feel like grinning. That was Major Alenko, all right, getting down to business, with a cool head on his shoulders. But maybe having the head on his shoulders wasn't enough, no matter how steady it sat.

He wasn't staring at his own hands anymore but at the far wall, where an Asari and a Salarian were comparing notes, talking in quiet voices about statistics—how many of their patients were gonna die by the time night fell and power got rationed out, just enough light to guide them all to their beds. And that didn't count the looters, the profiteers, the mercs, real people with real needs but no conscience, risking everything for a little something extra.

Now the grit was in James's jaw. He clenched it tight, muscles flexing over the bone.

'That long?' Alenko asked.

'Not that long,' Cortez replied. 'Since…the mass relays,' he added, all careful like a doctor himself, still able to get what _navigating_ meant even when conditions were balled up and he was out of the zone, 'it's been a little over a month. You want the exact number? I can give you that.'

'No.' Alenko released a breath. James didn't. He could feel it swelling up in his chest like a pressurized airlock. '…No thanks, I mean. That's fine.'

'You being a model patient?' James asked. 'That Asari and me—we're pretty tight. And some of the guys in here get _rowdy_, Alenko.'

Alenko'd dealt with a whole lot in his time, more than James'd been there for. Not more than James'd seen, but a whole lot. These things didn't take guys like them by surprise anymore. They were trained for surprises, for rough riding and poison atmosphere, any kind of enemy they _might _come up against because _might_ meant _would_, especially in the final hours. Whatever they were calling it. Some catchy name James didn't think about because the package was too neat. But whatever it was about James's attitude that made Alenko cough-and-laugh again was _almost_ a surprise, and that was all right.

Alenko was all right.

He was alive, for one thing. Breathing enough _to_ cough or laugh. He still knew what the sound was and he could make it on his own.

He _had_ to make it on his own.

It wasn't like he had another choice.

James ground his molars together. He thought of the whole thing like a round of poker, one he wanted to win, to prove he could make a comeback or just plain beat somebody, show them who was who. A matter of pride not turning into wounded ego. It was his poker face; for some reason, he'd never thought about using it anywhere other than poker before.

So long as none of the usual stuff showed up in his eyes—_You knew the Commander? _and everything that came after, all the _My Condolences_ and _Sorry for your loss_ bullshit—then nobody'd have to think about it.

Not more than they already were.

It stayed inside, hanging with the grit, between James's throat and his chest. It didn't sink any lower, didn't rise to the top. And Alenko didn't see it—didn't cut off laughing suddenly, twisting his fingers in the bandage around his wrist, all the color draining from his face. As good as Alenko's poker face was, James already knew it wasn't the best.

'OK,' Alenko said. 'Yeah, Vega, I'm… Yeah. Being a model patient. Haven't given anyone any crap yet, if that's what you're asking.'

'That's _all_ I'm asking,' James said. 'I'd better not hear anything, either. You got that?'

Alenko's mouth did this funny thing like it didn't know what it _was_ doing, like he didn't know what to tell it to do. It got stuck somewhere between a smile and not a smile, some kind of nothing, like an old M29 Grizzly stalling out on rocky terrain. You couldn't be gentle with the old M29 Grizzly. You had to be rough to kick it back into the right gear again, and people were always complaining they had bruises after the ride was finished.

Alenko didn't look like he could afford to be bruised up any more than he already was, or like he'd be jamming any clutches anytime soon. He didn't look like he knew how to keep a grip on anything more than himself, and even that was shaky.

But he _was_ managing it. For now.

'So, you know when you'll be out yet?' Cortez asked. His voice had this calm to it, this steadiness; he sounded like he was chatting about the weather, just saying hey and what's up. Wrong question, right question—at least somebody was talking and silence wasn't winning.

'Not yet. Soon, maybe. I don't know.' Alenko's expression had quit it with the almost and the sort of. It was holding steady, holding its own. He was looking at Cortez, focusing on his face, and that helped, too. 'You know, I'm starting to feel like I spend way too much time just waiting around in hospitals.'

'Piccadilly Memorial Field is one of the best there is,' Cortez said. 'And I'm not just saying that because of Vega's Asari friend over there. I mean it. You look good, Alenko. After everything… You look real good.'

'You're just saying that,' Kaidan said. 'But… I'll take it. Thanks. You look pretty good, yourself.'

Cortez's voice got warm without any warning. 'Yeah, well—Vega doesn't dent.'

'I seem to remember that, too,' Kaidan said.

'Well, however long it takes,' James said, 'you can bet _this_ guy's gonna be bugging you the whole time. Esteban can't get enough of the place. Might be he hit his head during the crash and now he thinks he's some kind of _doctor_.'

'Me?' Cortez looked up finally, meeting James eye to eye. James held his gaze until he couldn't anymore, because one poker face could only stretch so far before it snapped. When he swallowed, he could feel the grit on its way down, scraping up his lungs, tearing up his gut. Enough reps, though, and he'd get used to it. Build up muscle on the inside, not just everywhere else. But Cortez held it, long after James looked away, long after James's dog-tags jingled with the movement. 'Never dreamt of it. I'm just a pilot.'


	5. CHAPTER 4: CORTEZ

James did good that day, even if it might've been by accident.

Problem was, he didn't do so well when it came to positive reinforcement.

Most guys like James Vega didn't actually need the gold stars, the pats on the back, the recommendations of their friends and the commendations of their superiors. Sometimes the feedback was exactly what they _didn't_ want, and Steve got the feeling—walking back in the darkness, every other lamp dimly lit except for the ones that were snapped in two or just plain missing—that this was one of those times. Pointing it out was bound to make Vega feel like he was caught in civvies two sizes too small for him.

Or worse—it'd make him feel like he didn't deserve the praise.

The last time Steve offered Vega a credit for his thoughts, he'd bought himself nothing more articulate than a grunt and a shrug: Vega's big shoulders rolling, his eyes unfocusing on a distant zone. He was seeing something Steve couldn't guess at and knew he shouldn't bother trying, something deep and personal and buried under too much muscle, buried for a reason.

Steve glanced over, the space between them minimal but deceptively easy to close. Vega's expression was just as dusky as the dark. And Steve was starting to realize Vega was right about one thing—the _cerveza_—because while some guys only waxed poetic when they were too drunk, Steve did the opposite, when he was too sober.

Those little distances, man. They'd get you every time.

'Huh,' Vega said. He had good instincts; Steve'd always suspected that.

'Couldn't've said it better myself, Mr. Vega,' Steve replied.

'Sure couldn't've. That's why you didn't even try.' Vega stopped in the shelter of a wall and Steve stopped with him; when he asked himself how things would've gone if they hadn't had each other, a decent support group, familiar faces, something to connect _before_ with _after_ so _now_ could make some goddamn sense, he didn't have any answers.

He had fewer of those than he pretended, looking into strangers' eyes and saying, _Hey, I get it._

But compassion didn't mean understanding. And Vega, wherever he was inside his head, wasn't trying to put two and two together. He was just standing in the shadows, stretching his arms out in front of his chest, fingers locked through fingers, snapping his head from one side to the other and cracking loose all the tension he'd been carrying in the base of his neck.

It'd been one hell of a day.

'It's been one hell of a day,' Steve added.

'Sure has,' Vega said.

'I knew this guy once who might've called the whole thing _loco_.' Steve maintained the little distance; space was something he got, knowing when something was too close to call or just close enough. This seemed right. Maybe if they'd had a deck of cards, some thermoses between them, a late night snack of proteins and somewhere to sit, things could've worked out differently.

But this was the hand they'd been given.

'Figure I'll visit him until they let him out for good behavior, just like you said.' Steve rubbed the back of his neck. It got sore whenever he thought about the knots in Vega's muscles—and his hands needed to rub _something_ out whenever he thought about them, too. 'You could always drop by, visit your Asari…friend.'

'Don't even know her name,' Vega said.

'She have a nickname, then?' Steve asked.

'Nope.' Vega followed that up with another vertebral pop, the last one. Some of the fugees taking up impermanent residence in the shelter passed by; they were even laughing over somebody's joke. It was a familiar sound, but quieter than Vega's joints. 'Gonna go work out.'

'You do your dinosaur thing,' Steve told him. 'Have fun. Don't come back too late. Hey, Vega—just remember curfew.'

Vega lifted his hand in the old wave—not a salute but an over-the-shoulder thing, already on his way between beams of muted lamplight.

Steve thought about him that night.

He thought about him the next morning, too, through breakfast, catching sight of him at work—helping Turians again, doing his rebuilding thing instead of his dinosaur thing, all the heavy lifting he didn't, apparently, count as real exercise—and some more at lunch, when they shared a couple of proteins together without saying much. After that Steve just had to follow the laughter, kids racing through the halls, dodging them as they pinged off the walls and underfoot, and Vega lumbering by behind them with a _Yo, Esteban_, but not looking up.

Steve didn't want to suffocate anybody. But Kaidan Alenko was alone in that temp ICU and by now, he'd know all the stories, hear all the theories, all the times people said _Commander Shepard_ like they were praying, not like they were remembering. It was an honor. It was incredible for Steve to think that he'd served with that guy, that he'd even called him a friend. And Shepard…

Commander Shepard had helped Steve through his fair share of stuff he didn't know how to process, shit he hadn't known how to fly through at the time.

So there was that. Steve showed up at Piccadilly in the early afternoon when Alenko was eating lunch, dutiful, the kind of soldier Vega wasn't.

He didn't look hungry.

Considering how the food tasted, Steve didn't blame him.

'Hey,' he said. All the thoughts, all the extra cargo, got docked before he sat, body folding as easily as the first time. They were lucky if it was that simple, even luckier if they could recognize when it was, and Steve had _some_ experience with cultivating these skills in particular.

Alenko fought his way through some protein one-handed. Steve didn't offer to help because offering help to a soldier when he hadn't called for reinforcements was like offering praise to a marine when all he wanted was something to drink. Right place, right time. Wrong place, big problem. Figuring that out was even harder than being a good judge of simplicity, which _some people_ had trouble with.

Then again, those people didn't seem to have any difficulty being dinosaurs. Not everyone could do that, now could they?

It took all kinds.

'Hey,' Alenko said.

'Looks like Vega was right,' Steve said. 'Here I am already. He sure called it. Better not tell _him_ that, though. His head's big enough as-is—although maybe it's the other stuff that's too big, come to think of it.'

'Yeah,' Alenko agreed. '…Yeah.'

'…And I figured maybe the food they're having you eat might go down better if you had someone to suffer with,' Steve added. He took a thermos out of the pack he'd brought, nothing special, lunch he was putting off until the right company made it bearable. He didn't mind sharing the thermos of carbonated water that almost, _almost_ tasted like something, but only if you closed your eyes and held your breath. 'It's not much, but it washes the other stuff down. Even helps you digest it after. You don't _want_ to know how many war credits it took me to get some of this in the first place—and I guess I should've saved it up for something a little stronger, huh?'

Steve unscrewed the top and poured some out into it, liquid fizzling. He handed it off to Alenko for the first drink; Alenko took it, still one-handed and still unsteady, while Steve pretended he didn't see the way it shook, the way some of it spilled clear and wet onto Alenko's thigh.

It wouldn't stain because it wasn't much more than fancy, decontaminated water. Once it dried, nobody else would know it'd happened.

Alenko stared down at the splatter. To his credit, he brought the cup to his lips pretty quickly after that, and drank most of it in one gulp.

Maybe he wasn't hungry, but he was definitely thirsty.

'Hits the spot, doesn't it?' Steve asked. Alenko nodded. 'I mean, I know it's not the _cerveza_ Vega's always after me to use my connections for—because the way I see it is, if he wants it badly enough, he'll figure out a way to get his hands on it himself—but it actually feels like drinking _something_.'

'Got a rations program in place?' Alenko asked.

'Something like that,' Steve replied. 'Most days it even works the way it's supposed to.'

'Everything's really efficient.' Alenko finished off the drink. The empty cup looked easier to hold, carefully circled down to cover up the damp spots on the blanket. 'It's pretty impressive for… How long did you say it's been? A little over a month? It's _definitely_ impressive.'

'We've done all right. Considering everything that's still not accounted for, maybe we could do even better.' Steve wondered if he was starting to sound like Vega—they'd practically been living together, or right on top of each other. It was almost the same thing, only one implied conscious effort and the other suggested a lack of other, viable options. Either way, they saw each other regularly, every day, morning and night, a part of the bigger London crew that'd formed: doctors to look after the wounded, soldiers to keep the peace and rebuild the worst of the damage, even a few scientists to figure out what they could use, how they were going to use it.

_And, _Vega liked to say, _no fuckin' council, either. No jumping through any more of _their_ hoops._

Whatever came up to replace the old system was going to slap them all with so many regulations they'd be reeling for days, more like weeks, afterward. They wouldn't be able to trade extra work for extra light or cash in on a few later curfews here and there—not once things did get organized back into bureaucracy. And the second that happened, maybe the second _before_ it happened, when all the rules got sorted out and they made a hierarchy from the rubble, Vega was going to grab his stuff and head out of town, saying something like, 'Screw _this_, Esteban. I'm not playing this game _no more_. Now it's New York or bust.'

_Bust_, Steve thought. He drank straight from the thermos, cool water sparkling all the way down, despite the faintly chemical aftertaste it carried with it. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand after, thumb under his lower lip.

'Don't undersell it,' Alenko said, softening. 'Really. It's incredible, how people—how everyone just…heals. Hell, _I've_ done it enough times; I guess I shouldn't be so surprised anymore.'

'I've been there,' Steve said.

'And I'm there right now,' Alenko replied. 'Again. Crazy, isn't it? Just…crazy.'

His fingers tightened around the cup. Steve knew that look; he also knew that this wasn't what they were really talking about: that Alenko knew the story—the _stories_, which Steve tried to listen to and which Vega pretended _not_ to listen to.

One of them had to pick up all the pieces, keep an open mind instead of just a clear head. Steve realized pretty fast that someone was him.

At least it didn't hurt the way he'd thought it would. He mourned the passing of a friend, not the death of an ideal. And there wasn't a body, nothing anyone could point to, just a bunch of memorials set up all over the city to the same guy. Special ones, without any flowers.

Nobody had any flowers. It wasn't the right season.

But there was no way—there was just no way. Nobody could've survived that blast on Citadel when the Mass Relays blew and everything stopped, and then everything started again, changing again. Life as they knew it stripped of synthetic life as they knew it; everything was so crazy Steve remembered thinking, _You know what, we're probably all dead, and this is what it looks like. A hallucination before the end, not even a dream, just a couple of random neural firings, the what-if scenarios we never drilled_.

There was no way Alenko didn't know about Shepard.

He was alive and okay without Shepard, alive but not okay. That didn't mean he wouldn't be, but it _would_ take time, longer than his bruises, even if those things were looking mean.

They were already starting to fade. And Alenko already knew not to pick at them, to draw attention to them, to let them be.

'You know, if I ever find the butcher in charge of making these proteins,' Steve said, 'I'm going to tell him he might as well sell us all Turian food and stop acting like he gives a damn. Anything's better than this.'

'Anything's better than this,' Alenko agreed. He sighed, sounding like an airlock being decompressed.

And that was how—somewhere between arriving and leaving, less than a full hour—Steve offered to take him back to his place at the shelter when he had clearance to get out of there. Just as a stopover, something to look forward to, but the offer was there on the table.

'That is, _if_ you don't mind Vega snoring all the time,' Steve added. 'Which you will, but if _I _could get used to it, you'll have no problem.'

'Yeah,' Kaidan said in that way of his, slow leaching into even slower. 'Yeah… If you're sure you two wouldn't mind having me. You know, if…'

'You wouldn't be interrupting anything, if that's what you're thinking.' Steve almost laughed. 'Wow, no, we're just—sticking together. Like old times. For old times.'

'Seems like those are the only ones we've got,' Kaidan said, and rubbed the spot on his thigh where the spilled drink was already dried up.


	6. CHAPTER 5: ALENKO

Two more days.

Kaidan Alenko had two more days in Piccadilly Memorial Field Hospital as a downgraded inpatient.

'You've done well, Major,' his new Salarian doctor said. 'You've done _incredibly_ well.'

Kaidan closed his eyes.

The bruised flesh surrounding them had faded in the past few weeks, visible progress Steve brought a mirror to help him track. The first time Kaidan saw his own reflection, swollen lips cracked and dark, eyes unexpectedly bright in the middle of so much jacked up flesh, he didn't drop the mirror. The glass didn't break. There were no seven years of bad luck because all Kaidan did was hold onto the thing tighter and say, 'I _knew_ you were just trying to be polite about how I looked, Cortez.'

'Steve,' he said. 'You know, Vega's got this nickname system—maybe he's smarter than he looks, at least about that. Figuring out what to call people without having to worry if you're being too friendly or not friendly enough… Sounds to me like he's onto something.'

'You're not being too friendly,' Kaidan said. '…Steve.' His mouth moved with the words. He watched them come out in a backward shape and listened to them as they sounded all right. 'All the nicknames I've had… Well, they weren't always ones I _wanted_ to have, ones I was proud to call mine.'

'Biotic stuff?' Steve asked.

'No,' Kaidan replied. '_Vancouver_ stuff. Didn't you hear? We're too nice to be soldiers that side of the old border.'

He managed a chuckle. Steve put the mirror away. Then it was time for a checkup so Steve left, and Kaidan looked forward to that with a headache that started right behind his eyes. Anxiety caused them. Stress headaches. When situations were tough or when he was anticipating something unpleasant they always started up again. The inside of him was more predictable than anything going on outside.

Too bad it _had_ to be so unpleasant.

Kaidan was just waiting for the day they came for him. Old soldiers who'd worked their way up in the ranks always talked with the same kind of voice, and even when it pitched itself loud to be heard over chaos or quiet to be shared as classified intelligence, it was still _the same kind of voice_. He'd asked himself once, would he sound like that someday when he was older?

Would Shepard…

But they were going to want to know what Kaidan knew. They were going to have to debrief him. They had to know about him already and they were coming to catch up, to keep tabs, to touch base; they'd be there with matching shoulders and mended uniforms, probably after a routine checkup, when Kaidan was finally cleared. When they knew he wouldn't stall out like the Mako or just plain fold like a house of cards.

_Major Alenko_.

_You're going to have to forgive me if I don't salute_, Kaidan practiced by thinking, lips moving, as Salarian fingers rolled up the back of his gown and checked in with his broken ribs, the lacerations and the swellings and the edema. _My saluting arm's still feeling a little stiff, but other than that, I hear I'm doing pretty good. _

Two more days. He wasn't even in intensive anymore. If they were coming for answers, they were taking their time.

Or they weren't coming at all.

Or they already knew there was nothing to come for.

…Or somebody was keeping them off Kaidan's back.

'Heart rate elevated,' the Salarian said. 'Major Alenko, are you experiencing any acute physical discomfort at the present time?'

'No,' Kaidan said. 'I'm good. I'm doing pretty good.'

He didn't need a mirror to know how ridiculous that looked coming out of his face the way _it_ looked, even now, what took its sweet time to heal. When he rested his head against the pillow it didn't ever _really_ stop hurting, a thrum between his ears and under his cheekbones, and if he ever drifted off without realizing, shifting always woke him up again, the bruises aching down to the bones beneath. It wasn't in his blood anymore. It was somewhere a whole lot deeper.

But that was pain you couldn't quantify, nothing a Salarian volunteer could mark down on his charts with a tut and a _hm_ that sounded melodic, even it was only almost.

'Cough now,' the Salarian said.

Kaidan obliged.

His ribs didn't hurt as much anymore; neither did his lungs. He could take breaths that actually meant something without feeling like bone was piercing muscle and other vital tissues; the Salarian seemed to think it was an improvement, anyway. Doctors and nurses got the same look when they were marking down something like _progress, good_ and also when they weren't.

Kaidan didn't roll the gown back down. The Salarian did that for him. He thought about exercises, PT, atrophy, the walks he took around the Field Hospital with Steve, and everybody who wasn't coming to visit him.

'Major Alenko.' The Asari nurse—James Vega's Asari nurse, apparently—took the clipboard from her Salarian friend. 'There's somebody here to visit you.'

Kaidan blinked. He thought he could hear a humming in his ears, but in the end, it was just ambient noise, an old memory, everything narrowing to focus on the present, and an echo he hadn't expected. It sounded familiar, like déjà-vu.

Or like déjà-vu all over again.

He'd been here before. He'd done it already. He'd grieved and moved on and moved up and then, everything…

It still mattered, but he couldn't let it matter _right now_.

'Sure,' Kaidan said. 'I mean, thanks. Send them in.'

_Major Alenko_. He braced himself. He could guess what the Salarian would have to say about his heartrate now, but it wasn't physical pain that brought on the sudden shift.

'Her, actually.' Kaidan squinted but he didn't have to; it was Diana Allers, that reporter from the Normandy, and she was looking good. Even back then, in the final hours, she _still_ looked good—composed, like somebody broadcasting should, sending a message to everyone who was still watching. _I've got the time to comb my hair, so we're gonna be okay_. 'I _heard_ you were here. Had to see it for myself, though. That's just how reporters are, you know?'

'If you say so.' Kaidan watched her track her way to the stand next to his cot, working her angle. She had to be after something specific. 'It's not my thing—not personally, anyway.'

'You soldiers. You're pretty much all alike,' Allers said, then sighed. 'You always think I'm not talking business when I am, or that I _am_ talking business when I'm not. And don't get me started on the flirting. Look—you don't have to worry, all right? I'm not here for the big scoop. There aren't any broadcasts going out right _now__,_ anyway. I've got a show, and we do this daily printing… Just to keep everybody informed. Lots of leg-work, mostly. I'm surprised I still have feet and I swear, I've never been in such great shape in my _life_. Don't look so eager to agree with me about that, by the way.'

'I can tell,' Kaidan said, delayed but still mostly on cue. 'It's really working for you.'

'Thanks.' Allers glanced up and grinned, tight but real. 'You can tell I'm not here for an interview or the inside scoop because _I'm_ the one doing all the talking. Breaking the first rule of reporting and everything.'

'Right,' Kaidan said.

'Honestly, I'm trying to be a good person. I…just thought maybe you wouldn't mind asking a so-called 'objective' source any questions you had.' Allers had sharp eyes; Kaidan hadn't noticed them before because honestly, he hadn't been looking. He squinted again, not at anything in front of him now, mostly at what _wasn't_ there anymore. He wasn't surprised when nothing seemed real, then blinked dizzy white stars out of his eyes. 'So… Any questions?'

'Nothing I can think of at the moment,' Kaidan said.

Allers shook her head and shrugged. 'Somehow, I figured you'd say that. Well, it's free of charge no matter what, OK? And the offer still stands. I was just passing through. Besides…' Allers licked her lower lip, sucked it in, folded her arms, easy action on top of sore muscles. Kaidan knew. He lived it; he could tell. '…I don't know. I guess I have to see things for myself or else I figure somebody's trying to sell me something that isn't real. You take care of yourself, all right?'

'Not exactly something I've been good at in the past,' Kaidan said. '…But I'll see what I can do.'

'Since I asked so nicely,' Allers replied. 'Honestly, if you _don't, _I can think of way too many people who wouldn't be able to handle it. The big, tough guys especially.'

She meant Vega. 'I know a couple of those,' Kaidan said.

'They need all the help they can get.' Allers dropped a pamphlet on Kaidan's bed. 'Check it out. It's got some good stuff in it—and I'm not just saying that because I wrote most of it myself.'

'Thanks,' Kaidan said.

'For _what_?' Allers asked.

She didn't ask for anything else; she was already long gone, only passing through. Kaidan stared down at the articles in front of him, narrow print columns about natural resources running low and local refugee experiences and some breaking news about riots and looting in New York, the hopeful folded into the despairing. There wasn't anything about Canada; Kaidan didn't know why he'd thought about it in the first place. Vancouver. Home, kind of. A big picture window and a deck and a breeze and a young kid who had no idea what he was in for.

It passed through too—like that breeze or like Allers or like all the information he still wasn't processing. And he never learned the end of pretty much all the items in the bulletin. His eyes kept stopping whenever they mentioned two words, a rank and a name, a whole lot more important than _Major Alenko_. Whenever Kaidan got to that while he was reading, he skipped to the next article, until finally he'd run out of words to skim and words to ignore and there was nothing left but a piece of paper in his lap.

Two days later, he was released. Steve was there and Vega too, only the second time he'd shown up.

Kaidan took his first few steps out of Piccadilly, leaving old news behind.


	7. CHAPTER 6: VEGA

'It's only for a little while,' Cortez said. 'Don't look at _me_, Mr. Vega. It's not like you jumped at the chance to move out when Allers offered. She had that nice place and everything.'

'Just don't ask me to share a toothbrush,' James replied, 'and we're cool.'

He kept most of his stuff in a duffel, just in case. Easy to pick up and pack out and move on, and if anything happened, it was all there. He knew what to grab, what he needed and what he didn't, and it even fit with the rest of the room. Not much to look at, just a bed and a pillow and the table, and the old ship model, the aquarium VI.

Cortez dropped his bag of stuff next to that table, not heavy enough to move it when the duffel hit one of the legs on its way down. He looked at the model ship and the VI that stuck out like a sore thumb, a _broken_ thumb, but didn't say anything about it, James daring him to with his eyes.

They'd set up next to each other early on with Allers on the other side of James's space, because it was the only thing that made sense in a world that didn't anymore. But a few weeks in, Allers moved out, into another compound with another…roommate.

'You know she's living with Traynor now, right?' James asked. 'They're running that whole _News from London _thing together.'

'Right, right. I remember that.' There was no chair for Cortez to pull up and have a seat on, so he leaned against the wall instead, next to where he'd rolled his cot, with James pushing it from behind to get it around the corner, past the lifted tarp. The table separated them now. More like road-block than road-cocoa, James thought. 'Pretty impressive, too, how she managed to set the whole thing up so fast.'

'Pretty impressive how we can do alla this without somebody calling all the shots, you mean?' James dropped to the spot beside his bed, floor cold beneath his palm, tucking his other arm behind his back. He curled his knuckles, blunt nails tucked in, found the right angle, and lowered himself all the way, where the floor was cool but clean. At least compared to everything else. There was nothing but shadow under his bed, not even dust down there. His elbow bent. He held the position, feeling all the muscles of his body, from his shoulders to his calves, pectorals and triceps and deltoids. He knew all the names, that one-handed push-ups always worked best, but it was more important how they felt after: so damn tired and so damn real. 'No surprise here. Council didn't know—the hell it was doing. Just there to—make things complicated. Better off—doing things ourselves.'

In between counts, he remembered to breathe.

Cortez once said it was almost like a miracle James could talk and exercise at the same time.

But exercising was the only time James _could_ talk. The repetition made it possible, up and down, regulating his breathing and tightening his brain.

And Cortez was still in the corner next to the tarp, arms folded, not moving, watching the action.

James didn't start to sweat for a while, but when he did, he could feel it in the usual places, under his arms and down the center of his chest, on his upper lip, mostly on his forehead and in the small of his back, maybe some on his stomach, too.

'It's only for a little while,' Cortez said again, into James's grunts. He figured it was fine to start grunting after a hundred reps. And it was fine to stop thinking after two-hundred. 'Besides, you're the one who suggested it. Don't worry—I've got my own toothbrush.'

James didn't hear Cortez walking closer, but he did see his legs swing around in front as he crossed to James's bed. James knew he was sitting, could feel Cortez's shins almost grazing his obliques. He thought about how much harder it'd be with Cortez planting his foot between James's shoulder-blades and pushing down. He thought about the challenge and he thought about how sore he'd be after, how quick he'd fall asleep, and how he'd wake up early, stiff, in more ways than one.

'My idea, but you didn't argue with it, did you?' James bumped Cortez's knee with the arm he'd twisted behind his back. 'Now we have to hope the guy doesn't have nightmares.'

'That won't even be a problem if he's a light sleeper, anyway,' Cortez said. 'Considering how much you snore, Mr. Vega, it's not all that surprising that Diana moved out, either.'

James grunted, _huh_. The clap that followed was him switching hands, once, fancy, and he thought he could hear Cortez snort, grudging recognition of the effort it took to do that kind of thing mid-air. Then, James sank all the way down to the floor again but for some reason he stayed there, waiting, head turned away from the bed, staring at the bottom of the broken wall where Steve's duffel rested next to the clawed foot of the table. There was a snag in the fabric where it'd caught against something sharp, almost tearing but not quite.

'How's he holding up, anyway?' James asked. 'Major Alenko.'

'I figure it's something like you right now, actually,' Cortez replied. 'Going through the repetitions. Stuff he knows, stuff his body knows. He's doing pretty well, all things considered.'

'Huh,' James said again, and started his count all over from the beginning. One turned into ten pretty quick, then to twenty, and after that keeping count was just a way to prove to his brain what his body already knew about the situation.

'Anyway,' Cortez added, quieter, 'just because I've got my own experiences doesn't mean there's anything I can say to him to make _his_ easier. It's all about how he processes this. For all we know, he'll never _really_…'

'Must _suck_ to have people talking about you behind your back like this all the time, though.' James was closing in on fifty. After that, the next landmark was a hundred. 'You know how _I _process _that_, Esteban?'

'By being a dinosaur?' Cortez asked.

James closed out the feeling of amusement, the chuckle that came with. _No kidding_, he thought, while his civvies brushed against Cortez's, tee on fatigues. It was just fabric brushing fabric. It didn't mean anything. Sometimes Cortez let himself in before they were sharing a room, just to watch. Now, he didn't have that far to go, both of them letting an old friend stay close by. If he lost his shit—if he went completely _loco_ in the night, like he had every right to do—then they'd be there to hold him down until he came back to earth again.

_Earth_. Where they all were. Broadcasting news as far as New York and Vancouver and wherever else, but not up through the atmosphere.

The sweat was running down James's spine and under his belt. His blood was hot and the floor under his hand was hot, but every time his chest made it within a centimeter of the marble, the stone was still cold. It didn't breathe toward him. He was the one doing the moving. Even if the earth was spinning and going around the sun at the same time, James was the one going up and down.

_One hundred_.

Time was just flying.

'You don't have to show off anymore, you know,' Cortez said. 'Color me already impressed.'

'This isn't for you,' James said.

'Yeah.' Cortez didn't budge. Maybe the added pressure was in the air already, something James was pushing against, and Cortez thought a little more would be what made _him_ go loco. It wasn't going to happen. James hadn't seen worse, but he'd trained for this. He was ready for it. His body especially, but that wasn't the only thing. 'I know it's not. …But I don't mind pretending it is every once in a while.'

'Should've called _you_ Loco,' James said, doing the last of his reps in quiet.

It was the least he could do on this stinking budget. He'd already broken one of the lampposts out back, old metal shearing clean in two, an easy break.

'I don't know,' Cortez said. 'You can't change now. I'm too used to Esteban. Wish you could make me more of your famous _heuvos, _though.'

James grabbed for something to towel off with and Cortez handed it to him, fingers on fingers. James's hand was too numb, all the blood rushing back to his fingertips, to feel it. He had to pulse his grip on the terrycloth a couple of times to shake it off and loosen up the joints, then wiped the back of his neck, his forehead, messing up his hair, rolling up his t-shirt to get his stomach and lower back. He snapped the tented fabric twice for some air on his skin, and he couldn't reach his shoulders, so he didn't bother trying. When he was finished, the towel was damp and his blood wasn't cool yet. He knelt by the bed, bone meeting marble and neither one winning.

'You could quit staring and pass me something to drink,' he said.

'Figures I'd be bunking with the one guy in London who shows off, then complains when people take notice,' Cortez replied.

He grabbed the thermos off the floor anyway, passing it to James. That was cool, too, metal sides scratched up, providing texture he needed to get a solid grip. James wrapped his fingers around it and unscrewed the top and drank, for a long time, until all the air in his lungs ran out and there was nothing left in the thermos save for a few drops. Those always drove James crazy, knowing they were there, not being able to get 'em out.

'You know you love it,' James said, wiping the grin and the water away with the back of his wrist.

Steve leaned forward, elbows braced on his thighs, until they were close. Not too close but _real_ close, noses almost touching, the way James got all the way down to the floor when he let his arm bend at the perfect angle and his lips nearly brushed the marble. He could see Cortez's eyes, which were baby blues on the worst days, bright even from a distance. Up close, they had no flecks of gray in them, not like the marble at all.

The marble didn't breathe toward him, but Steve Cortez did.

'…You missed a spot,' he said finally, taking a corner of the sweaty towel and rubbing it along the side of James's throat—where the pulse got worked up and James could feel it, thudding, into the ink he had on the skin.

'Yeah.' James swallowed. 'Always forget that's there.'

'You just need some outsider perspective, that's all,' Cortez said. 'Easier to see those things.'

'When you're watching,' James said.

For all the times Cortez hadn't backed down, he chose this one to pull away, stretching his arms out, heels of his palms rubbing his thighs to his knees, sleeves rolled up to the elbow. 'Some people make it hard not to. Like I said—only guy in London who shows off, then calls people out for watching. You're a complicated man, Mr. Vega.'

'You sure about that, Esteban?' James asked. 'Most people think it's the opposite.'

That night, they didn't talk, bunk to bunk. They slept on opposite sides of the room, but James felt like he could _also_ feel Cortez breathing, up and down, in and out. It was something he _could_ feel, instead of everything that went by unnoticed—all the stuff they relied on and all the stuff that mattered most, bars that didn't snap when you were just trying to pull your own weight.


	8. CHAPTER 7: CORTEZ

Nothing happened.

And that was a good thing, Steve told himself. They needed their downtime, their rest and relaxation. At least, up to a point they did.

He'd seen some of the guys get stir crazy plenty of times; he'd seen their faces when they realized what was going on outside of Piccadilly, too. When they realized how much they'd lost but also when they realized how quickly people were bringing it back together again. They wanted their scars to stay and mean something, only it couldn't be raw flesh and open wounds all the time. Nobody could live like that.

And Steve _had_ tried.

To say that healing was part of the process of being healed almost seemed too obvious—except that it was the one thing most people couldn't wrap their heads around. They couldn't forget what they'd been through or what they'd lost. They had to keep pointing to it, pointing it out.

They didn't want pretty. Raw was what they knew.

Kaidan was doing okay, that place between fine and good, a stopover along the way. Steve was the one who kept saying he needed some fresh air—because providing excuses was what you did if you wanted to help out. Whether or not the lie was as obvious as it felt didn't matter so long as nobody called him on it.

And Kaidan didn't, wouldn't do it. Whether or not he was grateful…

That was something else.

Vega didn't allow it, but Kaidan took the walks without protest, levering himself out of bed in the early afternoon. He moved slow but steady, one foot in front of the other, just like he was supposed to. They widened their radius each time, walking in broad sweeps around the neighborhood. The sunlight felt good even if the air didn't feel clean.

One time they passed Vega helping out—where else?—at the orphanage, surrounded by kids, doing his dinosaur thing.

'He does that a lot,' Steve said. Like he had to explain it; like it was his place or his right or even his pleasure.

But something about watching the kids play together made Kaidan's face get tight, especially around the cheekbones, not so much around the mouth. His skin didn't look like it fit anymore, more bruise than flesh, so they didn't stay long.

Knowing what it was that was up and not being able to fix it—Steve spent more time with his hands balled into fists than he liked, or jiggling his knee when he was sitting. _Preoccupied_ was part of it, seeing what needed to be done and thinking about it instead of making it happen, because it wasn't that simple.

Some things got busted. Some weren't meant to fly again.

Most of the more easily repurposed scrap metal had gone into ground transport, which just wasn't the same. Steve felt comfortable behind the wheel no matter what, but he'd seen so many generations of IFVs at this point that he was starting to agree with _Vega_, of all people, about the merits of the M29 Grizzly.

It was what it was.

'Gotcha something,' Vega said, stepping in, while Steve was doing something else.

Not just anything. He was messing with the aquarium VI. It didn't have to be fixed; there wasn't an aquarium to put it in. But that didn't mean it had to be broken, either. At least it wasn't waterlogged, stinking of mildew.

'…Whoa, whoa,' Vega added. 'You can look but you can't touch, Esteban. Hands _off_ the merchandise.'

_Yeah,_ Steve thought. _That's the story of my life right now_. 'So you just want to keep lugging this hunk of junk around with you everywhere?' he asked instead.

Vega shrugged, holding something so close to the chest Steve couldn't figure out what it was. 'I'm not a fish person. They're always staring atcha. Gives me the willies.'

Like he didn't enjoy the attention.

Steve smiled anyway.

'Okay,' he said. 'Fair enough.'

'Anyway, if it ain't broke, don't fix it,' Vega added, conveniently ignoring the part where it _was_ broken. He nudged the Normandy replica aside to make room on the table, then put his goods down.

They were groceries.

Needless to say, it was unexpectedly domestic.

'I know how you feel about my cooking, Esteban,' Vega said. 'And me? I'm just tired of eating the same shit day in and day out.'

'Yeah.' Steve watched as Vega pulled out a hot-plate next, old and about as busted as the aquarium VI looked, but a hundred times as useful—if it _did_ work. 'You're a growing boy with a healthy appetite. I know.'

'Heh.' Vega found their power strip, messing with it for a few seconds, trying to get it to respond. From zero-eighteen hundred to zero-nineteen hundred, everybody was using, and there was only so much electric to go around. Then, the buzzing started; Vega only had to hit the thing twice, which for him, for _them_, had to be a record of some sort.

'You're a whiz,' Steve said. 'Of course, you couldn't have asked _me_ to take care of that for you or anything. It's not as though I'm good at it, right?'

'How about you just sit there and look pretty?' Vega replied. 'Relax or something—if you even know how.'

'Coming from you, Vega, that's really something.' Steve didn't grab the only chair in the room. Sitting on Vega's bed was…an option, but not surprisingly he hadn't made it that morning, and Steve wasn't at a place yet where he felt like doing that for him every day: running his hands over the sheet that was still warm, the pillow that had a big dark dip in the center. And he shouldn't be at that place, _ever_; Steve didn't want it and Vega didn't want it. If he did something like that, it'd have to be for a different reason.

But Vega's bed wasn't warm right now. It might've been safe. Steve's other options were limited; he couldn't lean against Vega's table—something Vega'd picked up and repurposed, something that used to be worth so much more than its current uses, although it _did_ match the ship model.

If you squinted halfway to closing your eyes, that is.

Steve didn't bother. He'd already looked at things from every angle while trying to resolve them into shapes that made more sense than they ever would, and eventually he sat down on the edge of Vega's cot, elbows on his knees, thumb tucked against thumb. It was hard beneath him, cutting into the backs of his thighs.

'I'd return the favor someday,' he said, 'but cooking isn't exactly one of my…talents.'

'This ain't about that.' Vega tapped the hotplate, testing to see if it was hot enough yet. It sizzled against his finger and he brought it to his mouth, sucking on it and saying _damn_ but not saying _ow_. 'Shit. Little bastard gets _hot_.' It clattered up on the table, along with a frying pan and something like a spatula.

'Okay,' Steve said. 'What _is_ it about?'

'Nothin' but the _huevos_, Esteban,' Vega replied.

If it were any other day—_BD_, Allers's operation was calling it; _Before the Decision_—then Steve could've brought himself to believe it. What was a little home-cooking between two friends? But back on the Normandy there were all the supplies they needed right there; all Steve had to do was order something extra on the acquisitions form, _if_ Vega gave him enough of a head's up in advance for him to sneak it on.

The first time, Steve expected them to come out burnt and too nasty to eat. _I can fix that_ turned into James kicking something until it sputtered to life again; _You wanna see my moves_ always ended up with _somebody_ in the medical bay, Dr. Chakwas looking reasonably put-out; and there was no reason why _It's time for you to try my famous huevos rancheros_ wouldn't end up the same way, with Steve scraping them out to the Commander's hamster when nobody was looking.

Back then, it was easy. Now, it was more than ten times as complicated. Steve had to wonder where Vega got the eggs, how he managed to get that hot plate, where the pan and spatula came from—whether it was on loan or his to keep. These things mattered, small as they were, because they were the only things people had to sort out anymore, the only things they could understand.

Something shiny like oil hit the pan. It sizzled. It didn't smell so great but Vega was cracking eggs, small as they were, straight on top.

'You like 'em nice and hot, right, Esteban?' Vega asked.

It was classic Vega. He couldn't say a damn thing without making it into innuendo; the problem was that he didn't realize he was doing it half the time, and figuring out which half was which demanded instincts in top-condition, honed and polished and ready to see some action.

'You know I do,' Steve replied.

Vega chuckled, his back to Steve as he bent over the hot-plate. 'Well too bad, 'cause I don't have any salsa. Gonna have to make do with this bottle of Tabasco and some jerky instead of the tortillas.' He shook his head at that, the tattoo on the side of his neck straining, then relaxing, then straining again. 'Whatever. I'll improvise. I _like_ improvising.'

_You can't kick huevos into being huevos rancheros, Vega_, Steve thought, but didn't say it. Actually, at the moment, it kind of felt like he could.

The smell was better than what Steve was usually met with for dinner—a big screaming nothing, taste that hit in the back of the throat instead of on the tip of the tongue, food that had to be washed down or else you realized how close you were to choking on it. This had flavor, and whether it was good or bad didn't matter so much as the fact that it was different.

Also, Vega never burned his eggs.

That was something Steve appreciated more than the eggs themselves.

It wasn't about the ingredients; it was about what you could do with them. Steve watched and Vega cooked. Halfway through the frying process, he used a plate to cover the frying pan, right after splashing some water inside from a thermos. Steve could still hear everything cooking underneath, muted and sizzling and spitting as it steamed and fried at the same time. Vega rubbed the back of his neck, hooking a finger into the collar and tugging it a couple of times, over a line of sweat.

The light in the room was dim, extra electricity mostly shunted to powering the hot-plate. As long as they didn't take up more than their faire share, Steve couldn't find it in himself to feel guilty. It was too warm, sure, but it was the first time they'd felt that way since…

_Since_. It didn't need clarification.

'If you aren't careful, everybody's going to want a piece of that action,' Steve said.

'Story of my _life_, Esteban.' Vega let his collar snap back against his throat. When he turned—only a half-turn to glance over his shoulder, but still—Steve realized they were looking at each other.

In months of bad moments and dangerous ones, never the good kind of dangerous, anticipation being more about what could go wrong and what more they could lose and remembering everything they'd already lost than it was about hope anymore, it was a really _good_ moment. Private, but not lonely—and not hiding from anything, either. Vega had a look on his face Steve didn't recognize, a face he _did_ recognize, a face he wouldn't stop seeing for the rest of his life. However long that was, it was that ability to remember that stuck with him.

And they needed that: something to lean on, something to lean back. It wasn't reliance. It was trust.

It was surprising. At the same time, it wasn't.

'Damn,' Vega said, but it didn't have its usual whatevers—its shields, mostly for deflection, only absorbing impact some of the time. 'They're just eggs, all right? You don't gotta look at me like _that_ about 'em.'

'Nothing but the _huevos, _Mr. Vega,' Steve agreed.

Vega blinked. He was close to being surprised—and maybe close to grinning, all in a split-second shift.

'Not just any _huevos,_ though,' he said.

'Yeah. I guess you could say they're pretty special ones,' Steve replied.

That, and the whole rest of the bloc was going to be jealous once they smelled it. They all shared space, noise, frustration, lights-out hours, curfews—but this was something they couldn't get in on automatically. Steve's stomach flipped over when Vega checked how the eggs were doing, when he turned off the hot plate and said, 'Blew my load on everything else. Don't have any more plates. Sooo… We're gonna have to eat it right out of the pan. Nothin' too fancy.'

'I thought you didn't like sharing,' Steve said.

'Forks are one thing. I don't mean anything by it.' Vega ran his palm over his head, from the nape of his neck up to the sort-of Mohawk in the front, not enough to make it messy. Steve imagined doing the same thing with his own hands and it wasn't the first time he'd pictured it, but his thumb was only pressed into the soft web of flesh between his fingers, rubbing the little reminder of a pulse that kept even time over there.

'Uh-huh,' Steve said. 'Come on, admit it—you're just making the rules up as you go along.'

'Who said there were rules?' Vega asked. 'I didn't hear anything about _rules_. And if I did, I wasn't listening.'

_So there_, he might have said. Steve pinched the same skin between his fingers, enough to serve as another reminder—before Vega served the eggs.

They didn't look the way Steve remembered them. Not much did. When Vega caught sight of them, lifting a brow and snorting some air from a flared nostril, Steve knew he was thinking the same thing. They weren't about to lie about it, but Steve couldn't help bowing his head and chuckling.

'You laughing at my _huevos_, Esteban?' Vega asked.

'No,' Steve said. 'I'm laughing at the two people about to eat them.'

Vega—probably because he couldn't decide if this was more insulting or less—couldn't find the right reaction. Steve's words caught him before he bristled, before he took offense. And then the time was in the past, the cue already missed.

Nothing happened.

The sauce was hot enough that it made Steve's eyes prickle close to something like tears; he had to wipe his forehead with the back of his hand and pinch the bridge of his nose instead of the vulnerable spot between his thumb and forefinger to clear his head. Even Vega coughed after his first bite, clapping himself on his chest, pounding something free. He was still sweating, but it wasn't for the usual reason—a work-out that lasted too long—and Steve didn't have a towel to pass him. Steve was sweating too. He tried Vega's technique for it, tugging at the front of his shirt, the top button of his collar already undone, and cool air shifted down the front of his chest where it was on its way to being too-warm.

'It's good,' Steve said. 'I think it's trying to finish what the reapers didn't, but… It's good.'

'Just good?' Vega asked, and it felt like a challenge.

Steve thought about kissing him—right now, after all this time, only it wasn't _that _long, not when you put it into perspective. Both of them were a lot older than they'd known each other, after all. And no part of it was more than a speck of dust in somebody's eye.

But there was a balance, something going on. The question of whether or not Vega was ready. When a guy did things half and half then obviously you couldn't trust which half was serious and which was fucking around—aimless, directionless, pointless. Lonely.

They could do this. It was so damn easy to get things wrong.

Steve rubbed his thigh with his palm. For once, Vega was watching him, low in the shadows—without blinking too hard.

Maybe it was just the eggs, but he was starting to look serious.

'Hey,' Kaidan said, from over by the hole in the wall, leaning against it with his good arm. Steve was reminded of what they all had to lean on, of what they didn't. 'I thought I smelled… Something burning, actually. I guess I was wrong. Don't let me interrupt.'

'What you smelled—that's just Vega's cooking,' Steve said. He'd looked up already, and when he looked back, Vega was scraping his eggs around in the pan, shoveling another bite into his mouth, staring at them with the same expression. So it could've been the eggs. It really could've been. 'It looks worse than it smells, but it tastes better than both.'

'We got extra, if you want some,' Vega added. 'Come on. I'll deal you in, just like old times.'

'Yeah,' Kaidan said, taking a step into the room. 'Just like old times.'

It wasn't, Steve thought. Not at all.

But that was okay, too.


	9. CHAPTER 8: VAKARIAN

When Garrus woke, it was to a feeling like he was missing more _face_ than usual.

Turians were difficult to make a dent in. They had skin closer to metal than anything else, but you couldn't really describe it in those terms. It was sharp, occasionally toxic to the touch, hard and unflinching. It didn't scar easy, but when it _did_ scar, those moments could last a Krogan lifetime.

Shepard had a few scars of his own. Nothing big. Nothing too obvious. When the going got tough, Shepard got going, so they all said—with a certain reverence that was nearly too difficult to contest—and, now and then, a few of his choices showed right there on his face. Not _quite _as impressive as taking a rocket to the mandible, but it came close.

Shepard was always close.

Garrus breathed. He could definitely feel a once-relevant, though not invaluable, portion of his face missing—but then, what else was new?

Those were the stakes. As long as he gave better than he got, the balance wasn't entirely unpleasant. Neither was the scar tissue.

It had texture. Shepard had even complimented it once—and it was better than being bare-faced, after all. It was better that their choices showed, that they didn't try to hide them.

Garrus had tried hiding.

It hadn't worked out for him. It turned out Turians weren't small enough to lay low.

When Garrus opened his eyes, he didn't recognize his surroundings. He was nearly certain he wouldn't recognize his face, either—whatever was left of it—when he saw it. There was a ceiling above his head, sound filtering in from somewhere else and a heaviness sitting on his chest, but all those sensations, finicky as they were, meant that he was alive.

So long as there was something left to scar, then people generally kept trying.

He flexed his fingers. Those moved, all three of them on one hand. That was an inspirational sign, though the rapid beeping that followed wasn't.

'Yes,' he said, his voice as dry as the desert on Tuchanka. An unfortunate comparison, as it reminded him of the locals, but it had to be made. There was no better way to describe it, or that lingering and unpleasant weight settling in to his joints, much like the cold. 'I _am_ alive.'

Taking shots in the dark was part of his specialty. Missing was no longer an option.

Shadows fell over him. Doctors, he assumed, or nurses. Certainly not enemies. _Clearly_ not more Krogans.

They were too quiet for that.

'Don't be so surprised,' he added. 'It was a lucky guess.'

He remembered the heat. He remembered the pain. He remembered Shepard and the knowledge—perhaps even the acceptance—that he was already gone, his square shoulders set in the distance, telling them to run. No matter how many times Garrus proved he was better than him, Shepard always found a way to keep one step ahead.

Garrus remembered the acceptance. Then, he remembered nothing else.

That lack of memory was a lightness neither more nor less unpleasant than the heaviness. It was equally balanced.

Garrus also remembered watching, from a vantage-point too low to the ground, thinking about the time on the Citadel when Shepard had missed the shot. He wouldn't miss when it wasn't between friends, of course; that was more than just unlikely. But still, seeing the man go in alone and knowing that he had to were moments beyond memory _or_ understanding.

_Stubborn_.

Garrus's vision cleared. There was more than one point to focus on; too many of them clouded his perspective. Aim required clarity and distinction, so _that_ was out of the picture, at least for the time being.

'Do you know where you are?' someone asked him.

Salarian. Garrus would know those voices anywhere. Meticulous and proud, so long as they weren't singing.

Then again, Garrus had only known one Salarian to do _that_.

'Why don't _you_ tell _me_,' Garrus said, 'and then I'll tell you if my guess was right.'

The Salarian didn't laugh. They rarely did. 'This is the Waterloo Memorial Field Hospital,' he said. 'You were very nearly dead—for a turian.'

'Damn,' Garrus replied. 'It seems I wasn't even close.'

As little face as he had left, what remained was still moving—and he was still forming words. The skin was taut and pain lingered at the edges of that sensation, draw tight across the bone beneath.

'Tell me,' Garrus said, 'how much of my face is gone?'

He knew the Salarian would be incapable of giving anything other than an unfailingly specific answer. 'I would say, based on close observation, that the percentage is not insignificant. Somewhere between forty-six and forty-eight of the right side _is_ missing. Appears there was damage done to a pre-existing skin graft. Do you recall the name that you were given, or shall we call you _John Shepard_ for now?'

Garrus's smiles were neither few nor far between but the mandibles tended to mask their presence, making them seem like something else less obvious than they were. Now, he didn't have the luxury. He didn't feel like smiling, either. 'Tarquin,' he said, having realized some time ago that he had a marginally perverse penchant for nicknames. '…Tarquin Victus.'

'Very good,' the Salarian replied. 'One moment, Tarquin Victus. Entering your data. Please, no sudden movements—you might get dizzy.'

He was writing things down, distracted. Garrus stared at the ceiling only to see it move; what he thought might be a hallucination based on physical damage—it seemed unlikely so much of his face would be gone while both his lucky turian eyes remained unharmed—was in fact just part of the architecture. He was under a tent, the tarp snapping with a sudden wind.

That explained the cold.

'My colleagues will be arriving shortly,' the Salarian continued. 'They are…very excited to learn you've, shall we say, made it?'

'That makes two of us, I'm sure,' Garrus replied.

'Touch and go. Turian anatomy isn't our specialty.' The Salarian's voice held the same trance-like quality as whatever machines surrounded them—none of them with the vibration of the final roar, each wave of piercing light, each fired beam and the scorching heat that followed, even the predictable rhythm unavoidable because of its power and speed, and the final deafening explosion that razed them all, when Garrus was reminded of just how fragile human bodies _really _were. Shepard, lifted in the air, tossed forward and beaten sky-high, and no way to tell whether it was fabric or flesh being torn to shreds as Garrus, too, succumbed to the sheer force of it all.

Man up. Turian down. This was always something Shepard had needed to do alone. And Garrus understood it. He liked to think he understood it better than anyone else.

That didn't mean he had to _like_ it.

When he turned his head, the pain became more acute. The beeping quickened. He could hear some commotion nearby and imagined the salarians, their heads bowed together, in typical salarian conference over atypical turian anatomy.

Some things never changed.

Shepard had died to protect that.

Garrus allowed the words to make themselves known as more than _just words_, a state of truth, a reality of the galaxies they now inhabited. Whatever came, whatever had passed and whatever waited on the horizon, this was their inheritance. Whatever Shepard had done…

Obviously, it had worked.

'Tell me,' Garrus said, as his doctors gathered close, 'what have I missed? I get the feeling it's a lot.'

So they told him.

About the relays. About the Citadel. About _the_ Commander Shepard, whose body was never found but whose sacrifice was understood and praised in a way only the dead could ever claim. About the synthetics and about that final second in battle when all seemed lost—when, suddenly, the Reapers fell. All the while, they checked his vitals, and Garrus's heartbeat didn't kick out of time or pick up its pace when he heard what he already knew, down below the ruined skin-graft, even deeper than bone.

Yet turians were stubborn—maybe not in the same way krogans or salarians or _council members_ were stubborn, but they were stubborn enough. And Garrus in particular had always enjoyed knowing the title was his. He wouldn't have had it any other way.

Just like Shepard.

_He owed me a drink_, Garrus thought. Those things left unfinished but not unsaid were…unfortunate, because they gave a stubborn turian reason to be more stubborn than ever.

It was possible Garrus owed _Shepard_ that drink. Wherever he was, Garrus _had_ promised to meet him there.

One of them wasn't making good on their end of the bargain. That didn't sit right. Garrus asked how much time he had left in observation and special care and the salarians conferred for a while longer in hushed voices they probably assumed he couldn't hear. When they passed into a certain part of his field of vision it was like they'd disappeared.

It was possible Garrus was missing part of his eye, the one on the right side, which was always his blind spot to begin with. Hence the missile he took to the face.

His situation was unpleasant, but it wasn't dire.

Wasn't that _always_ the way.

'Some time yet,' the first Salarian told him, a long while later. Night must have fallen, because everything was darker now. The bleeping had slowed along with the rise and fall of Garrus's chest, under the heaviness that remained—like that time James Vega asked Pilot Steve Cortez to sit on top of him while he did push-ups to make the task more difficult and, presumably, more meaningful. There was a rumbling noise coming from nearby just like a Krogan snoring—when Wrex and Grunt slept on the Normandy, the entire ship knew—and maybe that was exactly what it was, here in the Waterloo Memorial Field Hospital, where they had all kinds of patients. It made sense, grim and determined and gritty as sense ever was, that Garrus wasn't the only fallen soldier in these times, and also that he might be one of the few who had a chance to rise again. But he didn't want it—not alone. 'There used to be a river here, you know. The Thames. Famous for such a long time, but now…' Garrus could hear the Salarian sigh, very quietly, but loud enough to make the snoring unimportant. 'Well. We're very lucky there's still a river-bed, aren't we?'

'Without a river to go in it?' Garrus replied. 'That's a _strange_ way of looking at luck, if you ask me.'


	10. CHAPTER 9: ALENKO

There was something going on—something between Steve and James Vega.

It was easier to see these things when you _weren't_ in the middle of them. Kaidan wanted to use that as an excuse for why he hadn't figured it out earlier for himself, but really, he had no excuses. Not anymore.

Kaidan also wanted to tell them, whatever it was, to go for it. They didn't know how long they had; they didn't know what could happen later or even tomorrow. They just didn't know anything.

What was the point of making all those mistakes if nobody ever learned from them?

But the words died on Kaidan's tongue when he tried to let them out, during the dinners they ate together. Just a pilot, a soldier and a marine, like the start of a joke in Allers's daily news bulletin. When he tried to chuckle at the thought, a hit of tabasco knocked him square in the back of his throat and the others had to watch him choke, thinking it was about all the things he couldn't handle instead of all the things he couldn't share.

It wasn't Kaidan's place to say anything. They could waste all the time they had because that was what people were good for, apparently.

And when he thought like that, he tended not to make it outside until later in the day, not because his limbs were too heavy but because the sunlight felt wrong. He didn't want to feel it.

By that point, the days themselves were getting shorter, winding out of summer and heading into something closer to fall. Not that they could tell, because the trees were all bare and burnt and black like they'd just come out of winter instead of the other way around. Some of the buildings were more than halfway repaired, but the farther out they got from the radius of Piccadilly and Leicester and the National Gallery, the trinity of London relief efforts, the less obvious the signs were.

It was dangerous out there. Kaidan was recuperating and he wasn't supposed to go alone.

Steve went with him a lot of the time, nothing but walking. Maybe he had his own advice he thought wasn't his place to give, about what it meant to lose somebody the way they'd both lost…somebody. If Kaidan thought it would help, he would've taken it, no hesitations, only a few more questions asked.

He just wanted to know it was going to be all right. But the truth was, he knew it wouldn't be. And this wasn't a shocking revelation, either. He'd known for a long time.

That was what it all came down to. What Kaidan knew, what he'd believed, how he'd prepared—and how he had to live with it after. How he had to force himself into healing when everything inside felt like doing the opposite.

His bruises were fading. His headaches came and went. His biotics were in good shape; every time the Asari nurse checked up on him she was pleased, said it was _lucky_, and Kaidan gave her a tight smile instead of a wince.

'Yeah,' he said. 'Lucky. Thanks. Thank you.'

He stared at his own progress report to understand the statistics of his body, what he could and couldn't do. _Limitations_. The physical therapy was something he thought maybe he could work on with Vega, out in back where he exercised every day, but then he realized _that_ was out of the question. If Kaidan wanted to feel inadequate, then sure—but if he wanted to start small and doable, he'd stick to lifting a few simple weights with his bad arm in the privacy of his own room, the separator drawn, pain-sweat beading on the side of his throat. And when Steve came in to ask him how he was doing, Kaidan said, 'Yeah, I'm doing great.'

_Lucky_, even.

They both meant the same thing when they weren't, actually, the truth.

He lifted the weight, just a hunk of scrap metal that hadn't been melted down and repurposed, to prove the point. His elbow didn't pop. His fingers were closed tight around something cool his palm had made warm.

Steve offered him a smile that wasn't pitying or sad but a little proud of what he figured Kaidan had already accomplished.

Just waking up and swinging his legs over the bed was hard enough. Steve got it. He didn't say anything other than, 'That's great— That's great to hear.'

'Anyway, I won't be taking up your space for much longer,' Kaidan added. 'It's not like I want to overstay my welcome.'

'Hey, don't worry about it.' Steve pushed his already rolled up sleeve higher over his elbow; Kaidan hadn't seen it slipping. 'You know it's fine, right?'

There was a time Kaidan would've given anything to have the excuse to be with somebody alone, without all the usual suspects hanging around too. There was always at least one other person in the picture, watching the sandstorm on Mars, adding to the conversation, blowing even the pretense of privacy wide open and stacking up those chances Kaidan never took because he never had them in the first place. There were so many of those—and nobody showed up injured and bruised to force them into sharing close quarters. Maybe, if they had, Kaidan would've been able to think the word _lucky_ without feeling his skin tug at the bruises, his mouth settling into a hard line.

'Just don't do me any favors,' Kaidan said. 'You've got…something good working out for you here.'

'Right. In the shelter.' Steve tilted his head to the side and Kaidan knew he wasn't buying it.

But Kaidan's arms were already too tired to do much shrugging. 'Sure, okay. If you say so. But if I'm getting in the way—'

'You'll be the first to know,' Steve said. 'Man, I'm itching to get out for a while. Feel like taking a walk with me, soldier?'

Kaidan said yes to the question like he always did. Saying no would be like shooting himself in the foot—something he hadn't done literally for a long time.

All the resolutions he'd made before—they were calling it _BD_, and even though it was hard to swallow, Kaidan could still get his mind around it, put his head somewhere in the game—didn't have the same weight here. They didn't have the same purpose. They didn't have the one thing they needed, which was a name, the one on the back of a dog-tag that he'd managed to keep throughout the whole ordeal. A single, bent rectangle of stamped metal he couldn't look at, especially not when it caught the light. Not anymore. He couldn't keep it under his pillow, either, so he left it under the cot instead. It was pushed far enough beneath that he didn't trip on it when he swung his legs over the side of the bed, just as simple as a grunt and a 'Sorry for slowing you down, Steve.'

'Slowing _me_ down?' Steve gave his sleeve one final twist. This time, it held in place above the bone. 'Who said anything about that? I'm the one who likes to take it slow these days. Stop and appreciate the view. …You know, the part of it we've still got left.'

It wasn't all bad.

'It's okay,' Kaidan said, not _it's great_ or _it's lucky_ or even _it's good_. That was how they knew it was the truth, because it didn't pretend to be anything better than it was—or anything worse.

It was closing in on dusk when they stepped outside, a little later than they usually were. In one direction they'd head to Piccadilly. In the other, they'd end up at the orphanage. There was one other field hospital across the river that wasn't a river anymore, and all around them the shells of bombed out buildings were still dark shapes against the sky.

There was a third option, somewhere to the east, branching off from the gallery square.

'Vega has this thing about Turians doing repair work,' Steve said casually. 'Some people just can't see anybody else doing something right and they _have_ to do it for themselves.'

They were doing okay too, Kaidan thought. He just couldn't get the word out anymore, and Steve let it slide.

Walking while thinking was hard enough. Walking while keeping up appearances _and_ a conversation… Some days, it seemed like it was always going to be impossible.

Kaidan stared at their options, then took the third, heading in the direction of somewhere else.

He could still feel it, the reverberations underneath their feet, the echoes in the sidewalks and the torn-up chunks of pavement. It wasn't pretty; there was no gleam, no polish, nothing bright to sting your eyes from every engineered scenic viewpoint. Basically, it wasn't the Presidium because that didn't exist anymore. Neither did a café nobody would remember the same way they remembered the other monuments and memorials, all the places where shit _really_ went down instead of the places where two people finally shared a meal together.

Kaidan's throat didn't feel tight. He just didn't think about the names, the sheen of starlight off the single rectangle of metal, and he was _okay_.

'Haven't been this far yet,' Steve admitted. 'Funny, isn't it? Where your feet take you. All the routines you fall into without realizing.'

'Funny isn't the word I'd use,' Kaidan replied. 'Maybe… Maybe predictable. Maybe that's more like it.'

'You're right about that.' Steve was following him now, but Kaidan had no idea where he was taking them—just that it was down a wide street, and all the houses they passed weren't even memories of their former selves. And Kaidan didn't mind the perspective, what he had to see out here. The silence. It wasn't as ugly as it seemed. At least it was honest. 'But you can't think of it like that forever. Eventually…something's bound to surprise you. Shake you up a little. You know how it is.'

'Do I?' Kaidan asked. 'Yeah. I guess I do.'

'It doesn't stop happening, you know.' Steve stopped walking instead. There was a bench in front of them—untouched, not even scarred or scathed, without a single twist in or burn-mark on the metal. It was like it'd fallen straight out of the sky from another time, another place. Kaidan thought about ducking down behind it and taking cover—it'd be a good vantage point—but nobody was firing at him. Nobody he could see, anyway. Besides, his joints didn't have the bend. He didn't have the speed. He didn't have the motivation, not anymore. 'Hey—let's sit for a while.'

Steve sat first. Kaidan knew it was to show it was all right, that he was doing it for himself and not for anybody else.

'We don't have to stop,' Kaidan said. 'Not on my account. All the nurses say it's better to do a little extra each time.'

'And they'd be right.' Steve waved him over. Kaidan still couldn't move. 'It looks better from down here, Kaidan. Trust me.'

That wasn't the problem. What Kaidan trusted, what Kaidan knew—that was never in doubt. He just didn't want to trust it or know it, and he was being stubborn; he was being worse than somebody else he once knew, a guy who had to pretend all the way up until the end that they were going to see each other again when both of them knew they weren't.

'He said he was gonna meet me,' Kaidan said. 'After everything was over. And I— I didn't even believe him.'

'You know, it sucks to be right,' Steve replied.

Kaidan took a step forward, then sideways. His knee creaked when it bent, but he made it onto the bench without any trouble, one stiff hand resting with the knuckles curled and swollen on top of his thigh.

'Yeah,' Kaidan said. 'Don't I know it.'


	11. CHAPTER 10: VEGA

James could still taste the Tabasco.

It was the first decent meal he'd had in _way_ too long. Not to give himself _too_ many props or anything, but his cooking had something to do with it—even if he could only go so far with the ingredients he had to work with.

It tasted good. That was all the mattered. Spicy, hot. It burned in his mouth and settled in his stomach, and that night he didn't listen to the noises his gut made before he spread out on his back, one elbow over the edge of his cot, and fell asleep.

He listened to Steve shifting in the cot across the way instead. And sleeping didn't come so easy.

In the morning he did twice the usual number of reps. Chin-ups, sit-ups and push-ups. Everything _ups_, even the stuff that was low down to the ground. He did his laundry and his rounds, once past the orphanage listening to all the noise inside. Everything sounded copacetic, somewhere better than okay.

By the afternoon his body was sore in a way it hadn't been since they were hauling ass all over the galaxy, sweet-talking Krogans—_nobody_ was good at that—and siccing Thresher Maws on Reapers, curing the Genophage and losing Palaven. All of the old times, the good stuff.

And James was beginning to think he'd never see that kind of action again.

Nobody said he wasn't supposed to miss it. That was implied. What they fought for was what they _got_, and there wasn't any room for being disappointed.

It didn't make a lick of sense.

James's sides were aching, the muscles he hadn't pushed to their limits in too long reminding him they were there and they could get mad as hell when he wasn't respectful.

Good. At least they still knew what being mad was. At least he could still breathe heavy for a reason other than all the smog in the air, one of those famous things about London they _didn't_ put in the pictures or in the tourist info.

James always thought it was supposed to be pretty. Obviously, after the Reapers were through making a wasteland of it, it wouldn't be—but he couldn't imagine getting to the point where it might be again, no matter how many sunsets they went through, no matter how many Turians broke their hammers trying.

Maybe it hadn't been so great in the first place. Maybe they were looking to rebuild something that never was.

Maybe it was better this way.

And maybe it wasn't just the muscles in James's sides that hurt but the muscles in his head. Sometimes his brain felt like it was the one doing twice as many reps, upping the ante every twenty-four hours, to say nothing of how hard his heart was beating.

But James didn't believe in days off, in resting. He believed in poker and _huevos rancheros_ and relaxing after he'd pushed too hard, everything all at once, all in the same long day.

There was no such thing as going too far. There was no such thing as stopping.

There were groceries on his table when he got back to the shelter and spare parts next to the aquarium VI, something that looked like a wrench but probably wasn't.

There was no Steve, and James missed him—not like a hole but like something that'd been covered up half-assed with a tarp and some tack, like a hammer slipping in his hands, like something he still had left to finish without knowing how to begin.

Yeah. James's head hurt. He picked up the not-a-wrench and tossed it from one hand to the other, then put it back down again, not knowing whether or not it was in the same place as before.

The aquarium VI wasn't fixed, but one of the dents in the model Normandy SR-2's four miniature antiproton thrusters had been patiently hammered flat again.

It was always hammers.

James picked that up next, not the first model ship he'd owned but the first one he'd inherited. It was small, light in his hands, barely weighing anything at all. He wondered how much it'd cost, how many credits Shepard had forked over for it—and _why_. Shepard had the ship itself, the real deal, so what the hell did he need with something that'd make him feel too big, like he just didn't fit? Or was it that the real deal made him feel too small?

The way James saw it, he could do one of two things: put the ship up on a stand now that _somebody_ had gone and fixed the dents, show it off, keep it on display—or give it away to a better home. Let some kid who didn't have anything else play with it. Mess it up, zoom it around, do all the noises. Crash it into the ground just _like_ the real deal, only with fewer sparks in the end.

They'd love that ship. They'd recognize it. And James didn't want to get sentimental or anything, but it'd keep the Commander behind it alive—in a manner of speaking.

Dead, but not gone.

It was the least they could do.

James put the model ship back down. There had to be something to cover it up with, to get it out of the way of making dinner and working with the hot plate. Obviously the groceries were some kind of suggestion—although Steve could've just _said_ he was hungry for more.

James could hear it in his voice. _Hey—we should do this again sometime._

The back of James's right deltoid twitched. He reached over to rub the pain out, thumb digging in where it hurt the most, but it twisted him up all wrong trying to work through it. On his own, he couldn't get the right angle.

'You look like you could use some help with that,' Steve said from close by, somewhere over James's shoulder.

James's deltoid didn't stop twitching. If anything, it was getting worse. He smoothed his fingers out over the cotton and muscle and he almost reached the right spot. Almost, but not quite.

'…_But_ if I know you, Mr. Vega—and I think I do—you aren't going to take me up on that offer.' James could hear Steve walking in. He turned, arm still twisted up, like he _was_ patting himself on the back. 'Just felt like looking to see if I could round up something a little less…_Tabasco_ than Tabasco. Turns out I couldn't. And now I'm pretty sure some people think I'm crazy—crazier than they already did, anyway.'

'You _are_ crazy,' James said.

Not _loco_. But close.

'Yeah, well, they had no idea where I was getting fresh eggs from to begin with.' Steve glanced at James's hand and he finally dropped it. 'You have any idea about that?'

'You accusin' me of something, Esteban?' James asked. 'Cause if you are, you might as well come out and _say_ it.'

'Not every question's an accusation,' Steve said.

'Just most of 'em,' James replied.

Steve sighed, coming close to rolling his eyes. They were big and blue and they didn't always take James by surprise—although he did always notice them. There had to be a difference in there somewhere worth a damn but it was a knot James couldn't reach, either, couldn't work out with his hands alone. Some things were too small; some things were too big.

'See something you don't like?' Steve asked.

James realized he was staring. 'It ain't that,' he said.

It was pretty much the opposite. And the truth stuck in his throat like the grit always did. James knew if he swallowed he could choke on it—that it was the small stuff that always took big things down. Same with Shepard and the Reapers; same with hammers and Turians. Same with the model Normandy, maybe, although how that fit into everything wasn't as obvious as the rest.

'Guess you didn't pick up anything to drink,' James added, while Steve watched him with those eyes. James felt them everywhere they landed, on his face mostly, probably picking up on all the _small stuff_, like the scars James touched in the night with his thumb. It wasn't too surprising that he couldn't feel anything there, all dead tissue, so he had to keep reminding himself of what he had. What his face looked like. The pieces of himself he'd lost along the way and the other pieces he'd built up twice—no, ten _times_ as strong. They were all him, one hundred percent, and one hundred percent natural. He knew how wide his shoulders were and the exact shape cut across his right cheekbone all the way to the bridge of his nose.

He knew the hurt. He knew the result.

'No _cerveza_ this time,' Steve said. 'I like it better when you're talking, not the beer.'

'You would,' James said.

'I do,' Steve agreed.

'Yeah,' James added, but it wasn't the banter he needed, just this word that fell flat. He moved toward the hotplate instead but Steve cleared his throat.

'Let's try this again.' Steve's eyes were on James's back, right on the spot that hurt. Not that it was _hurting_, exactly; it just bothered him more than it usually did, which was a whole different relay. 'You look like you could use some help with that.'

'Thought you wanted some of my famous _huevos_ again.' James jerked his thumb to the groceries. ''Fact, you made it pretty obvious that's _exactly_ what you wanted.'

'The _huevos_ can wait, Vega,' Steve said.

In all the time they'd been on the ship together, James rubbing at his own shoulder halfway down the shuttle bay from where Steve was taking care of his own business—and Steve noticing, sharp-eyed and clear, since his _job_ was picking out stuff they might run into and navigating around it—he'd never once offered something like this.

At least, James had to figure he meant a backrub.

It didn't sound so bad right about now, either. Somebody else's hands making sure everything was still there, even the dead scar tissue, the skin that wasn't skin anymore.

Through the tee James was wearing—but _still_.

James could feel that skin start to prickle under the already sweaty cotton. He hadn't changed yet, and he was close to just pulling the shirt off and saying _to hell with it_, only something held him back. He blamed the ship. He blamed thinking.

All too often, that got in the way of doing.

So James sat down on the one chair they had, knees spread open, trying to remember what it felt like to relax. If this'd been one of the docking bays back on the Citadel and there'd been a poker table in front of him, a bunch of cards laid out and credit chits spread around next to those, he would've been able to grunt and sigh and shake everything loose. Hell, he wouldn't have needed the rub down to begin with.

Then again, if this'd been one of the docking bays, nobody would've been standing behind him, sleeves rolled up to their elbows—except maybe Shepard, leaning in just a little closer to check out James's hand.

And that was different, too.

He could feel it before Steve even touched him, before he dropped that final distance and settled in with palms that weren't as warm as they might've been, pressed on either side of James's neck. James knew what his pulse did when he was hit with a shot of adrenaline—still all natural—and this was it, the rush and the thrill he couldn't get anywhere else, at least outside of wartime.

Sometimes he faked it 'til he made it, getting his blood up, pumping as much iron as he could. He could hear the kids laughing while they played with rocks and Turian-busted hammers and whatever else they shouldn't be messing with that they needed to pretend were toys.

Yeah, James thought. He was gonna have to give that model ship away. Only problem was they'd all want it, and a lot of somebodies were gonna end up disappointed.

Then, skin to skin, Steve's right thumb brushed over James's second-favorite tattoo.

It used to be his first favorite. But that was before he got his N-7 one, way back in Cargo Hold C, what felt like a lifetime ago. Even the pain had dulled into nothing—nothing that mattered, anyway.

Now it was all healed up and it wasn't something people saw all too often, not like the one on James's throat. That was for flash, for show, for proving he had what it took to hurt. And Steve's thumb, no nail, pushed against the flesh, where there wasn't any ink, where there wasn't any close-shaved stubble, where it was just the vein and the pulse and the adrenaline and everything _all natural_.

James's mouth was dry. It wasn't the first time. He couldn't swallow but it wasn't because of the grit; the whole thing was a fucking bad idea but then again, so was everything he did. _I made a few mistakes in my time, Loco_, he remembered telling Shepard once, but he had to be drunk to admit it, woozy and grinning and just having beat Major Alenko at cards six ways to Sunday. No mercy. Not on the Normandy.

_It's the mistakes you don't make that you'll regret the most, James_, Shepard told him.

James laughed at the time, tipping his beer. _I'll drink to that_, he'd said.

'This it?' Steve asked, digging his knuckles into the spot.

Like he didn't already know.

'_Shit_, yeah,' James said. He felt the muscles protest, flexing and stiffening up; he heard the chair scrape while he _almost_ shifted gravity and leaned all the way forward to get away from the touch. Steve let up but James didn't want him to. He'd taken worse. He knew he could take this. Even if he couldn't, he'd work it out.

He needed to work it out.

Steve didn't let up for long. He was a pretty ruthless guy, going straight for the knot, bracing one hand at the back of James's neck while the other had at it. James grunted a couple of times, nothing big, nothing close to a wince or anything, and finally—it took a lot of effort and he didn't know why—he bowed his head into it, chin hiding in nothing but shadow.

It was dark. He could smell his own sweat. He closed his eyes and Steve gave him this little rub with the fingers he was using to brace himself while his knuckles just kept going at it, deeper and deeper.

It felt good—but not the kind of _good_ Alenko was always using to say _Don't ask me anymore, I'm not okay_ and not the kind of _good_ they bargained around like the new version of credit chits. _How you doing? I'm good, man, I can't complain. _Or _How's this look? It's good, right? Yeah, sure, it's good. _It was a catch-all but it didn't mean anything, and at the end of the day all the goods came up empty, just like James's hotplate.

'Yeah, I can feel it,' Steve said. He didn't ask, _Is this good?_ James was grateful for that. Actually, he was grateful for a lot of things, Steve's hands among 'em, sliding his fingers around to James's shoulder and holding on tight. The chair rocked, one leg that much longer than the other legs, enough to make it bounce. James's weight was also enough to brace it, but not all the time. Not all the way. There were moments it didn't cut it and those moments made him feel like he wasn't even on the ground.

No gravity situation. Free-falling. Out there in space.

The back of James's neck strained. 'Hey, relax,' Steve said, somewhere closer to James's ear than he'd expected. Breath and callused fingers and soft palms.

It could go on forever or it could stop, but there wasn't any in-between.

Everything that'd been hard was starting to get soft and some things that should've stayed soft had started to get hard. James realized his own elbow was jammed into his thigh from how he was leaning on it. 'C'mon, straighten up or you really will throw your back out,' Steve said, both hands on James's shoulders, at the caps of James's sleeves, then on his biceps. He helped out with the alignment.

For old times' sake, James said, 'Aw, Esteban. You really _do_ care.'

It was just one of those things.

Steve gave his biceps a squeeze. 'How's that working for you?' he asked.

'It's good,' James said, hating the taste of it in his mouth. That word that didn't mean anything, that had no size at all.


End file.
